The Most Overrated Movie of 2003

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 2003)

Spoiler alert. Every major critic foamed at the mouth with exaltations for this film, the actors, and the writer/director. Within the first half hour of the movie, I knew there was trouble as I was asking myself, "When is this thing going to start getting good?" Miss Coppola has a problem--it's a problem young Charlotte expresses about herself to Bob--she wants to write, but she doesn't really like anything she writes. That the screenwriter shares her character's anxiety is quite clear throughout this movie, which is drastically under-written (don't mistake "understated" with deficient storytelling). There are multiple scenes that make no sense or do nothing to advance the story--from Charlie Brown and friends getting shot at (was that a real gun)? to the entire Karaoke bar ordeal. What's the point of the whispered ending endearment that only the two leads can know? It must be that Miss Coppola just does not have the writing chops to pull off an effective, poignant punchline to Bob and Charlotte's "affair." In all likelihood, at sometime in her writing process for this script, she had a line that the audience was to meant to know, but just like insecure and inexperienced Charlotte, Coppola's lack of confidence caused her to leave a blank space that basically screamed--"I don't know what I should do here!" Coppola would have been better off leaving in a banal line than shutting the audience out with contrived secrecy. Instead, Coppola relies on her actors to portray their individual poignant feelings; doing their best with the little they were given. It's damned frustrating and completely pointless for the audience to know that Bob's words to Charlotte provoke an apparently emotionally tearful, but tender resolution for her, and a sanguine expression of his contentment, and not know what that sentiment was. Since Coppola is neither a skillful nor confident enough writer, she coped out and we're encouraged by effusive critics to believe that the secret whisper represents "art." What's the point of a movie audience if they are denied at least as much emotional understanding as the characters are conferred? And while on the topic of the ending whisper--what leads up to it is a perfect demonstration of the film's other flaws. First Bob and Charlotte share an earlier, semi-poignant good-bye in the hotel lobby. She hands Bob his jacket. Next she walks away with the jacket in her hand and gets in the elevator (presumably heading back up, but at least not out to the street). The elevator door closes on her. Bob looks at the closing doors wistfully as he poses for pictures. Charlotte does not reemerge from the elevator. Next he's traveling at a brisk clip in a taxi to go the airport (what happened to the big-time movie star limo)? Blocks away from the hotel he spots her walking down a mobbed street. Wow, for a guy that age, he sure has good eyesight. And speaking of superhuman abilities, how did she get out of the elevator to get where she was on foot so fast (she was casually strolling not running)? That's just sloppy, lazy, careless storytelling. The fact that the movie is vastly lacking in craft is evidenced by the writer/director's choice to show scene after scene with her leads bored, lonely, and unable to sleep, which produces its own enervating effect. In other words, the writer hasn't enough to say to fill a feature-length film, so she said the same things over and over. How many times do we need to see Charlotte staring out the window of her hotel to get the point? How interesting is it to watch either of them endlessly channel surfing through incomprehensible Japanese TV? How is it that Bob is such a big movie star that a Japanese company will pay him $2mil to advertise their whiskey, yet he seems totally unknown by the Japanese people he meets? Only Americans who chance into him recognize and acknowledge him. How is it that in the opening scene with him driving down the streets of Tokyo, he sees himself in a billboard AD that has yet to be shot? Why does Bob sleep with the cheesy jazz singer after turning down a hooker and resisting temptation with darling Charlotte? A truly competent writer/director could and should give their audience the opportunity to discover these mysteries and could do so by worrying less about art and concentrating more on basic storytelling skills. Also this movie was too darkly lighted. Better lighting, illuminating the mostly shadowy faces, might have helped compensate for the some of the gaps in the script. Finally, on the idea that every critic loved this movie so much--the theory here is that they just did not see it in its entirety. There's a reason for this suspicion--in more than one review the lobby good-bye was said to take place at the airport. Additionally, in this week's EW there is a still from the hospital waiting room scene that is also identified as taking place at the airport. Out-of-context, both scenes look as though they could have be at an airport, but unless you actually saw the movie, you know that no airport is ever shown. Something tells me that Ms Coppola's name and backing have landed her unwarranted praise and the many critics have fallen in line so as not to appear not to "get it."