Too much feel-good

Rating: 6/10 (5 November 2010)

"Crazy Heart" is one of those movies that you've already seen before, but you won't mind too much seeing it again with these characters and these actors. It's a typical "sunset of a legend" picture, complete with the wayward protégé, young saintly lover, and inspirational comeback. Along the way we're entertained by a number of decent songs.
I don't really take any exception to the praise for Jeff Bridges' performance. He's always been a good actor and it was fun to see him perform this type of larger-than-life role. Given the similarities of this role to his work in Terry Gilliam's "Tideland", this performance is basically another in the series of actors working with Gilliam and then turning their lessons towards more conventional fare to earn rave reviews. Which I have no problem with basically. His performance is solid, Duvall is solid even in a stupid mechanical role (the "best friend/bartender who will help him get off alcohol... really?), Gyllenhaal does her best as the "Saint Single Mommy" character given to her. Colin Farrell seems awfully out of place but maybe that was the point.
I enjoyed the early honky-tonk scenes, there's a lot of authenticity I think to the way the concert scenes are shown, both the bowling-alley small town scene and the big arena shows. The movie goes off the rails for me about the point when he takes the single mom and her adorable son on a ballooning trip. It just starts going rapidly downhill into the areas of cheap sentiment and convenient plot twists. This is the #1 lazy Hollywood formula: when in need of an emotional hook, grab a cute kid and put them in danger. Gets 'em every time. Spielberg taught us that and now every other film imitates the lame formula. I was disengaged with the movie when it got into that kind of thing, just sort of exploiting people's fear of missing children in order to accomplish a strictly mechanical goal (motivating the character to clean up).
I also wasn't crazy that the film showed his only way out as being to attend some 12-step program. Those people and that whole industry didn't need the free promotion. Ah, look how peaceful it is here in this rehab setting! Yes, huge insurance payments will do that. Inner peace? Not to be found in a ring of AA zombies or a finely manicured forest walkway with stream running through it. I would find more inner peace drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon fishing with Robert Duvall. The film manufactures a crisis in his health and then the really contrived situation with the missing child, just so that it can show that he couldn't keep being "Bad" forever. The drama didn't arise from the situations; the situations arose from the writers' need for drama. This wouldn't be so glaring if so much of the rest of the movie wasn't so down-to-earth and understated (for instance, the restraint they showed in not turning Farrell's Tommy Sweet character into a bad guy).
It's a mixed bag: Jeff Bridges fans should see it, people who like melancholy romantic dramas should see it, but those who are looking for a really exciting treatment will not find it.
Incidentally, I have a sort of personal connection to the film: a couple weeks ago I saw the 2010 Bridge School Benefit, where the producer of this movie T. Bone Burnett performed 2 of the songs along with Jeff Bridges. Pretty cool. Kris Kristofferson also played earlier in the day. A coincidence? Perhaps....