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This isn’t what I was expecting. I figured on clanging swords and thundering cannons and lots of swashbuckling, but this buckles far less swash than I imagined it would. I was expecting pulpy action adventure that was a whole lot of movie fun — I wasn’t expecting pulpy action adventure with real smarts and genuine heart and a grounding in reality.
Oh, great day in the glorious sunshiny Tuscany morning! A movie about a woman that actual women will be able to identify with, one that’s fantastical enough to be diverting and down-to-earth enough to let us recognize ourselves in it.
So whaddaya know? Ron Howard and Russell Crowe rode the short bus all to the way to the Oscars by playing the ‘we made a sensitive film about the mentally ill’ card. Which is complete crap, of course. *A Beautiful Mind* is pure made-for-Hollywood pap about the mentally ill in which schizophrenia is treated by Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman the way doctors used to treat it in the bad old days before we (some of us, anyway) were enlightened about diseases of the brain: Hey, snap out of it! Get over it! It’s all in your head!
Steven Spielberg has never made a film like this one before, sharp and bright, lighthearted and witty, underplayed and — dare I say it? — hip.
I should probably watch Being John Malkovich again before I try to write this. I’ve got the DVD here somewhere. It’s vitally important that I watch BJM again right now. I could just put it on for a while. I could write while I’m watching it. I can do that.
I so wanted to be able to reduce About a Boy to One Man and a Baby or ‘Big Daddy’ Meets ‘Notting Hill.’ I was so prepared to whip off a snark-laden diatribe against Hugh Grant’s Annoying Tics Find True Love. But I can’t. Cuz this is an actual grownup-type movie about figuring out that … more…
Toss a coin: Which do you prefer: A Heartwarming(TM) tale of one man’s triumph over mental illness? Or one director’s biting off more than he can chew and falling rather flat on his face? Or one more mostly terrific performance from Crowe? No need to look for a three-sided coin — you get all three in A Beautiful Mind.
Other critics have already dragged out the $10 words to describe this film — some of the ones I’d chose myself are ‘seductive,’ ‘masterful,’ ‘majestic,’ and ‘elegant’ — and you must believe what they say because they say True Things. But the one thing that strikes me most about LOTR: FOTR, besides its seductively masterful and majestic elegance, is simply how utterly right it is.
There are some serious gaps in my film education, I’m sorry to admit, but one of those gaps was recently filled when I saw *Apocalypse Now* for the first time.
What happens when you give $100 million to a geeky fanboy? You get a $100 million homage to a cult classic SF flick beloved by geeky fanboys.
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