A Mountain of Disappointment

Rating: Null/10 (23 January 2006)

Why is this movie receiving such critical acclaim? I consider myself a pretty discerning audience, but I am often easily impressed. I can sit through the most mindless of cinematic garbage and still find some merit. This film...no doubt about it... left me flat.
Let's start with the cinematography. How much have I heard how beautiful this film is? The scenery, the ambiance, everything about the backdrop of this film has been raved about. Well, I hate to break it to you, but it took place in Wyoming. All you need to do there is point and shoot and you can have unparalleled beauty. It doesn't take a hell of a lot of talent to find beauty in nature. Wyoming is a beautiful state. It is, for all intents and purposes, the "purple" in "purple mountains majesty". The scenery in this movie was nothing more than just that- scenery. I've seen better cinematography in a Budweiser commercial.
Next, let's talk about the acting. I'll take this one by one: Jake Gyllenhall was the same character he was in The Good Girl, the same character he was in Lovely and Amazing, and the same character he was in Moonlight Mile. He fell in love with someone who he wasn't supposed to fall in love with. What makes this different? In this one it was a man. Arguably, Jennifer Aniston, Catherine Keener, and Ellen Pompeo are attractive women, just as Heath Ledger is an attractive man. It's not exactly what I would call a stretch.
Anne Hathaway- did the filmmakers not see that she has some kind of gunk between her teeth in the scene where she's on the phone with Ennis? Honestly, it was enough to turn your stomach.
Michelle Williams was nothing special, just like she was nothing special in Dawson's Creek. Still, she's a whole lot better than her counterpart, Katie Holmes.
And good old Heath Ledger. He's Australian, so he would have to have taken some dialect lessons for this part. My question is this: who did he take them from? Billy Bob Thronton when he was trying to rehearse for Sling Blade? He sounded like Carl Childers. His daughter, played by Nip/Tuck's Kate Mara, did better acting than he did, and she was hardly in the film.
Finally, let's talk about the story. I understand that it's difficult to deal with being different. Annie Proulx also wrote The Shipping News and even though that movie was so long, you really didn't connect with the characters well enough to feel their pain. This was the exact same thing- the film was SO long, but there was nothing there. I have heard that it's heartbreaking how Ennis Del Rey never embraced his sexuality and how it broke Jack Twist's heart. I don't know about that... we're not really talking about a time where homosexuality was an accepted thing. But if I want to see a heartbreaking performance, Heath Ledger is going to have to step it up at least to half of the emotion that Hilary Swank gave in Boys Don't Cry. He gave us nothing to work with. It was nothing more than a man cheating on his wife, from what I saw.
Overall, a HUGE disappointment.The only thing that could have saved this movie is if Ennis himself was the one who killed Jack. At least then we'd see a man REALLY struggling with his self-image, to the point where he needs to destroy all evidence of (what people in those days may consider) "evil."