seen 22nd-29th July : Transformers [6/10]; The Hoax [2/10]; Big Wednesday (1977) [7/10]

Monday, 23 July 2007

TRANSFORMERS : [6/10] : US 07 : Michael BAY : 144m (BBFC)
seen at Empire, Newcastle : 23rd July : press show
   As well as rounding off Orson Welles's career on a famously low-key note, 1986's animated The Transformers : The Movie also proved the final curtain for Scatman Crothers - the legendary showbiz veteran who'd voiced jive-talking 'Autobot' Jazz throughout the TV version's original run. So while for Welles Transformers was a prime example of cinema-history bathos, for Crothers - who'd helped make Jazz one of the show's most beloved characters - it was rather a nice way to bow out.
   Not that you'd have any inkling of this from this new, blunderbuss-bombastic Transformers movie, which relegates Jazz (along with most of his fellow Autobots, plus their dastardly Decepticon enemies) to a background role and until, almost literally, casually chucking him away. Typical of how the Autobot-vs-Decepticon business is essentially here just a rather arbitrary pretext for a string of sensory-overload set-pieces designed to show off the latest CGI innovations.
   Several sequences are jawdroppingly effective - including a wonderfully gratuitous moment of camera-whirling, grace-note show-offery involving a screaming woman in a chic turquoise dress (who's never seen before or after.) But there isn't anything like enough plot (or coherent subtext) here to justify the extravagant running-time and, gamely valiant efforts of youthful star Shia LeBoeuf ("I bought a car. Turned out to be an alien robot. Who knew?") notwithstanding, it all feels like a dumbed-down cross between Terminator 2 and Starship Troopers. John Turturro's hornily dyspeptic G-Man ("she's a criminal! criminals are hot!) is, however, good for a giggle or two. 1.8.07

THE HOAX : [2/10] : US 06 : Lasse HALLSTROM : 118m (BBFC)
seen at Empire, Newcastle : 24th July : press show
   In 1972, the scandal of Clifford Irving's fake Howard Hughes 'autobiography' made global headlines. It's a remarkable tale, containing the ingredients for a terrific movie - which could perhaps have been based on Irving's 1981 account, The Hoax. But such a movie should never be confused with Lasse Hallstrom's cockamamey film of the same title, which Irving himself calls "a historically cockeyed story where the main character, almost by coincidence, happens to share my name."
   How ironic that a picture about a hoaxer should prove to feel - and indeed to be - so thuddingly fake. Creatively disorienting flim-flam is one thing (as with, say, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - no masterpiece, but leagues above this misfire.) Ringing so relentlessly hollow and false - in period-detail, characterisation, dialogue - is quite another. It's rather painful to see performers like Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden, Stanley Tucci and Alfred Molina so badly served by a film which fails on so many levels.
   One presumes the project was greenlit as a result of Hughes biopic The Aviator, with Richard Gere (who plays Irving as an unappealingly slimy, conniving cad) sniffing a post-Chicago Oscar-bait opportunity. But rather than showcasing his abilities, The Hoax instead sorely exposes Gere's limitations, especially in repetitive, indulgent sequences where Irving's personality and appearance take on increasingly Hughes-like aspects. A third-act lurch into Beautiful Mind territory, meanwhile - crediting Irving's book with indirectly leading to Watergate and thus Nixon's resignation - smacks of the most extreme desperation. 1.8.07

BIG WEDNESDAY : [7/10] : US 78 : John MILIUS : 120m (BBFC)
seen at Star and Shadow, Newcastle : 29th July : public show (paid £4)
   Few Hollywood films are as yearningly elegaic as Big Wednesday, John Milius's self-consciously epic/nostalgic - and seemingly autobiographical - vision of California surfing from 1962 to 1974 (covering the periods before, during and after America's involvement in Vietnam). And the film itself also helped bring about the an end of an era, its famously disastrous box-office performance contributing to the demise of what's now widely acknowledged as American cinema's last golden age - when studios were willing to fund the wayward, often maverick visions of Altman, Scorsese, Ashby, Coppola, and co.
   Not that Big Wednesday is any kind of masterpiece: the plot, following three pals (drunken surf-maestro Jan Michael Vincent, genial straight-arrow William Katt, belllowing hothead Gary Busey) through various personal crises, is a flimsy, gabby affair; Milius's direction is patchily uneven, only haltingly gaining confidence and fluidity at roughly the same pace as his protagonists mature; performances are wildly variable, with Katt faring best in the only role that boasts any proper character-development.
   But despite the numerous flaws, it's easy to see how Big Wednesday has gradually accumulated a devoted cult following - especially among surfers worldwide. Crucially, the characters spend most of their time surfing - captured in appropriately majestic visuals supervised by adventure-sports-movie legend Greg MacGillivray - rather than fretting over their motivations and emotions. Milius cleverly allocates such verbiage to minor character Fly (Robert Englund), a weedy onlooker whose philosophical, retrospective monologues punctuate the four sections, striking a tricky balance between windy bombast and poetic mythmaking. 2.8.07

Neil Young

NB
1. all films seen in the UK, and all timings approximate, unless stated otherwise
2. timings taken from the BBFC website are rounded to the nearest minute (i.e. 100min 29sec = 100min, but 100min 30sec = 101min)
3. an asterisk [*] in the rating indicates that film is not a feature (i.e. 0-39m = short; 40m-63m = medium-length; 64m+ = feature)

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