Pan

Rating: 4/10 (15 December 2005)

I didn't like it, and for good reasons, so don't read this if you don't want the film spoiled for you.
"Oh, did he write the songs, too?"
That is the probable reaction of many to "Walk the Line", an appropriate title for a pedestrian "love story" and cursory biopic. Much like the kids on 90210 that never do any homework, Johnny Cash's and June Carter's songcraft is abridged to watching them play through the finished versions of their songs haltingly in two scenes. No rough drafts, no place of inspiration, no real influences, they just sprung fully grown from the head of country music. And wasn't "Walk the Line" written for his first wife, not June? That would have complicated things.
What the film does have a lot of time for, however, is a lot of after-school special daddy problems and a "my wife is an emasculating unsupportive shrew" domestic drama. I read somewhere that Roseanne Cash walked out of the family screening of the movie because her mother was portrayed as such a pill; but didn't she take it too hard? I mean it's just her mother up there on the screen for millions of people to boo and hiss at, right? The movie needed more oomph at that point and to show a man leaving a wife that isn't the daddy's girl of Satan might either make viewers scratch their heads orundermine their moral fiber! You'll have people everywhere getting divorced! Even more than the 50% that are right now! That is the evil that could result from showing something complex you elitist anti-flyover moonbat!
We have the unexplained inspiration scenes, the death in the child scenes, the breakdown scenes, the "baby I just need mah medicine" scene (though it does vary from Bill Clinton's medicine), the "daddy you never loved me" scene. Get it? And throughout it all Joaquin Phoenix obviously gives one of the year's top performances, for your consideration, despite that he doesn't look much like Cash, behave like you can imagine Cash behaving (all petulance and no pride), or sound much like him. Oscar tallybots are standing by. In fact he only sounds like him in the later scenes where the tracks have been heavily produced and his tone lowered, the early unfiltered singing scenes show that he really can't sing and doesn't have the low notes. Note to future disciples of T-Bone Burnett: okay songwriter, good player, great producer, not a vocal coach.
As for the script: having a family squabble in front of the Carter family would be like a young politician having a squabble in front of the Kennedy family. The Carters are shown as homey yokels, while superior in sense and sensibility to the weirdo Cash family; in reality they were and are legendary superstars and country royalty. How about a movie about them? From his IMDb profile it is apparent that the most important thing co-writer Gill Dennis has ever done is to be "Man with Cigar" in David Lynch's "Eraserhead." This actually tops about everyone else involved in the movie.
Reese sings nice and looks nice and isn't given much to do.
Other than Shooter Jennings playing his own father, none of the people look or sound like the superstars they are playing or show any of their charisma, especially the Roy Orbison, and I didn't know that Jerry Lee Lewis grew up in Chelsea.
Phoenix just isn't very good, and the problem is compounded by a sense of cockiness in how good he seems to think his performance is; he was undermined by the script from the beginning, but he could have put a little real thought into the freaking thing. He really seems to think (from his performance and his interviews) that he is a master thespian. Would that River were here to show how it's done.
Best example of how it falls short: the moment we are all waiting for, when the two of them finally get together, is just tossed off, the movie has no shape. But then, none of James Mangold's movies have been very good and they have all opted for shallow psychobabble over real psychology (ummmgirl, interrupted and Identity come to mind).
"Ray" was a pretty bad movie, directed by another pretty underwhelming director, but I'd still watch it again over this. I guess it made John Carter Cash happy to see this boring generic love story up on screen, even if it isn't the real story.
The best thing about this movie is the poster.
By the way, I wonder how many stealth marketers plant fake independent praise on this site.