It’s the beginning of the month and I’m fleshing out the archive a bit, though in admittedly slow-hand fashion. Next on the docket: this review of The Majestic, originally published upon its theatrical release in 2001. Why now? Let’s say… because I just saw Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy having sex in the hot tub which my balcony overlooks. Does that work? Did that get your attention? OK, settle down. On to the review:
The elastic-faced Jim Carrey, who started his career on Fox’s sketch comedy show In Living Color and first sprung to cinematic prominence in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective by talking with his butt cheeks and sporting a pompadour that would shame both an “Uptown Girl”-era Billy Joel and a modern day Chris Isaak, has been on a slow and steady quest to get serious. His first two dramatic feature film leads, The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, brought mixed results. For the most part critically lauded, both as a whole and with respect to his performances, the films secured Carrey Golden Globe Best Actor wins from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (though the latter was curiously in the comedic category, something Carrey himself poked fun at in his acceptance speech). Yet each film was met with degrees of indifference at the box office, as well as virtual Academy Award lock-outs. What, then, to make of these mixed signals?, the owner of a shuttered, crumbling movie house (“He m Jesti” reads the marquee), is convinced the young man before him is his long-thought-dead son Luke. And in fact Peter <I>is</I> a dead ringer for Luke, so who is he to argue? The return of this small town war hero, missing for almost 10 years, reinvigorates the entirety of Lawson (save one surly small fry cook), and <B>Harry and “Luke,” who remembers movies but not his own life, go about restoring the theater</B>. At first unsure what to make of his situation, Luke soon settles in to Lawson’s comfortably paced lifestyle and community, even reconnecting with the beautiful Adele Stanton (Laurie Holden, dolled up to look like a cross between Grace Kelly and Veronica Lake), his girlfriend prior to the war.<BR><BR>Meanwhile, however, government agents are searching for Peter Appleton, convinced he’s an on-the-lam communist. They eventually find him and — faced with a lack of corroboration for his predicament — Peter/Luke, who himself <B>admits that he “never saw the percentage in being a man of conviction,”</B> must testify before the HUAC, deciding what to say and whether to name the names of people he doesn’t even remember.<I><BR><BR><B>The Majestic</B></I><B> is warm, well-meaning and quietly paced, a mannered and impeccably ordered Capra-esque tale of self-searching. Why then does it feel so listless for much of its running time?</B> Well, first and foremost the film is steeped in such indolent, overly familiar metaphor that it boggles the mind. <B>Darabont, for the first time not working from his own script adaptation, cedes his better judgement to the obvious (and overly idealistic) instincts of the screenplay</B>. He and writer Michael Sloane are longtime friends, and perhaps this led to a more rose-colored take on the material, but <B><I>The Majestic</I> is astonishingly inert</B>.<BR><BR>So, in a perfect world, <I>could</I> it have worked? Absolutely. Those who doubt Jim Carrey’s credibility as a capable, fully functional dramatic lead don’t fully recognize his talent. Carrey has a deep and rich reservoir of pain (best captured here, believe it or not, in a bar scene in which a despondent Peter spills his troubles to both the barkeep and a stuffed monkey). But <I>The Majestic</I>‘s script doesn’t fully exploit Carrey’s abilities. Much of the film is presented naturalistically, yet Carrey is a reactive figure on the surface frequently, and underneath always (even when heading up the renovation of The Majestic), until the very end of the movie. Given the circumstances of his amnesia, Peter/Luke would seem to be a much more inquisitive character, and if this isn’t going to be the case, that needs to be explained and explored in detail.<BR><BR>Since it’s not, however, <I>The Majestic</I> is less the story of one man’s self-realization and more like <I>The Accidental Hero</I>; <B>the dots on Peter/Luke’s emotional journey simply don’t connect</B>. So the search continues. It’s not for lacking of trying, but Carrey still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. <B>(Warner Bros., PG, 152 minutes)</B></p>
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