A lesson in why no one makes golf movies

Rating: 2/10 (9 June 2001)

...and especially golf allegories in the Ray Bradbury mode. Golf is neither cinematic nor dramatic. Every hole the hero scores in this movie is like all the others, in spite of the same straining for suspense, the same straining for astonishment by the spectators, the same straining for uplift in the Chariots of Flashdance scoring. But what else could you do with scenes like that?
I've liked most of Robert Redford's movies, loved The Horse Whisperer, but here he's back attempting to film another unfilmable book. He's also back in Milagro Beanfield country, attempting to create another legend. Legends--actual legends, as against stories-behind-the-legends--make lousy movies. Milagro Beanfield sat around for years while everybody tinkered with it, trying to make it something other than flat and slow, and succeeded only in making it flat and fast; but I rather liked it, anyway. This time Redford in the hands of Dreamworks, who never know when to stop (cf. Jan de Bont's The Haunting), and it was probably they who led him to stuff the climaxes with technical tricks that aren't really in his style and only make the movie seem more insincere.
When Matt Damon is on screen, he actually performs the estimable feat of selling the story, in the same way Brad Pitt sold A River Runs through It, by playing Robert Redford; only better than he would have. Damon also seems to be playing Gatsby, and some of the sequences seem to have wandered out of that movie. Will Smith does not convince in his part, but what actor living or dead could? Jesus as a lovable and whimsical caddy who talks like Uncle Remus? Best to be polite and pretend it never happened. The other actors were fine, except for Charlize Theron, whom I found exceptionally cold and unattractive in what was obviously meant to be a warm and attractive part.
Once in a while the film looks past the faces to the golf field itself, and for a few seconds gives us something to see; but it hardly pertains to the story. Redford is trying to translate the untranslatable.