Tradition

Rating: 3/10 (21 September 2004)

One has to admire dogged admiration of an established tradition for its own sake, however misguided or foolish it may be. Rather like our national penchant for elevating family scions and movie actors to be heads of state, Hollywood chooses to produce its own brand of Stepford Husbands and foist them off on sentimental audiences until the last possible dollar can be wrung out at the box office.
In the tradition of aging Kewpie dolls like Ryan O'Neal, Warren Beatty, and Robert Redford, we now have Brad Pitt joining the parade. As Dorothy Parker might have said of him, he displays the full range of thespian emotion from A to B. I think he probably got as far as "bewilderment" in this dismal and tedious remake. It must have been a painful job for the hairdresser to keep his golden hair strands properly mussed from scene to scene, given that everything else about him suggests wooden immobility.
Beautiful as the sets and costumes are, and with at least some of the cast able to generate a spark or two, this lifeless attempt to find profundity in cheap sentiment is not worth a second glance.
And, in order not to beg the question, I admit that I watched it only as a way to fill some time waiting for the postman to arrive with my social security check. The luxury of tedium.