insipid

Rating: Null/10 (8 October 2005)

I feel like a real chump for rushing out to see this movie on the day it opened.
I guess I went cause PSM is such a great actor, but a great actor can't invest a cardboard character from a crappy script with life. And I didn't even think his performance was all that impressive from a purely mimetic standpoint. I mean, we've all seen lots of Truman on TV, if we are old enough. The voice was only about halfway there. I guess the reality just doesn't seem real enough, and this is why the watered down version of Capote works for audiences really well? I don't know. But frankly I think any really homophobic lout could probably do a better Capote imitation! Crinkling your nose a lot and getting about 70% of the quirkiness of Capote's delivery doesn't add up to a staggering performance for this viewer. I was also really disappointed by another actor I like in this picture, Clifford Collins, Jr. but he had so little to work with, nobody to impersonate but Robert Blake...and no real lines to speak of. no wonder he just resorted blinking and fidgeting on overdrive.
The script is really to blame
2 spoilers:
such transparently contrived writing at times, like when Capote waltzes into the FKI office and announces "I don't care whether you catch the killers or not; I'm here to write about the impact of the crime on the people of this town!" I mean I think Capote would have a little more savoir faire. But you see, this BS is 'necessary' exposition so that later the other little plastic exchanges will 'work': when he tells the friend of the clutter girl "I know how hard it is for the boyfriend: everyone used to think they had me pegged cause of how I am and how I talk and they were always wrong!" (now this is neither here nor there, but were they?!?) and she melts at this self obsessed sharing and presents him with the victim's diary. To Chris Cooper he does a little bit about how after her death, his mom's husband asked him to please "talk, talk about anything! because you see he couldn't bear to be alone with his thoughts, he couldn't stand the pain of it all!" and this of course is when Chris cooper melts, etc... These moments, and every single other one designed either to demonstrate how insensitive or, contrastingly, how terribly sensitive and universally in touch with us all as great writer he must be... are pure drivel. And each of them concludes with we the audience sitting there along with the camera, waiting for the "cut!" as we are supposedly having it sink in that something profoundly humane has just occurred. pathetic!
disclaimer:
my phone started vibrating a little over an hour into the movie and I had to leave to go back to work, so I didn't see it the whole film, but I'm sure I saw enough to peg this film as a typical kitsch Hollywood artist biog. maybe PSH actually did get to do some acting in the 2nd and 3rd acts, portraying the decline of Capote...
all you have to do is watch the maylses brothers short of Capote talking about in cold blood to know that he wouldn't be sitting there with his editor going "Oh, Tenesee loved it! gee!!!" leaving the praise to come from the editor! and you'd see that even so young he had that incredibly weird delivery happening, it's not like something he saved for Dick Cavett and hadn't perfected yet,,, till after the period this film portrays!
0 stars!!!