Can Someone Lend James Franco a Hand?

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2011)

Man goes hiking. Man gets pinned in canyon by boulder. Man cuts own arm off to save himself. Man lives. End of story.
That's all there is to "127 Hours," and director/writer Danny Boyle and co-writer Simon Beaufoy aren't able to make it about much of anything else. James Franco plays the man, and we feel bad for him in the way a normal human being would feel bad for any other human being in a similar situation. But we certainly don't feel invested in him as a character, because the material doesn't allow Franco to create one. There are some flashbacks that give us a peek into the man's life before the accident, and it's from these that we are to absorb the film's trite moral lessons (things like you should appreciate the people you love more and shouldn't take a single day for granted). But really the whole movie is really just build-up to the money shot scene, when Franco's character saws off his arm, which is admittedly pretty hard to watch but isn't really the hook on which to hang an entire movie.
Boyle typically over-directs the film to within an inch of its life. The director he most reminds me of is Joel Schumacher, which -- trust me -- is not a compliment. He clearly doesn't think we as his audience have the intelligence or attention span to stick with a story that takes place in such static settings, so keeps the film constantly jittering along in a way that distracts us from the story rather than enhancing it. The only time I enjoyed his hyperactive style was during the kick-ass opening credits sequence.
Grade: B-