THE AISLE SEAT - by Mike McGranaghan
"WINTER'S TALE"
Own Winter's Tale on Blu-ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital HD on June 24th
Akiva Goldsman won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for A Beautiful Mind back in 2001. His other writing credits give you a better idea of his career output: Batman & Robin, Lost in Space, The Da Vinci Code, and I, Robot are among them. In other words, most of his projects are not exactly award-worthy. Goldsman makes his directorial debut with Winter's Tale, and it most definitely is award-worthy. Unfortunately, that would be the Razzie Awards.
Honestly, I don't even know how to summarize this movie. Colin Farrell plays Peter Lake, a thief in 1916 New York City. He's being chased by mobster Pearly Soames (Russell Crowe), who is actually some sort of a demon in disguise. Just when Pearly and his goons have Peter cornered, a white horse magically appears to save him. (Have I mentioned yet that this movie is astoundingly weird?) Then Peter meets dying heiress Beverly Penn (Jessica Brown Findlay) while robbing her estate. The two fall in love, but she dies, leaving him devastated. Cut to nearly a century later. It's 2014 and Peter is still walking around, not a day older than he was before. He's got amnesia, though, and his attempts to remember his past cause him to connect with Virginia Gamely (Jennifer Connelly), a reporter with a sickly child. Pearly, who has long believed Peter dead, discovers the truth and sets out to find him again. The horse is still around, too. Reincarnation plays a part in all of this, although the less said on that front, the better.
I'll be honest – that was not a good summation of Winter's Tale, but how do you sum up something that is so incoherent and random? I didn't even mention the scene where Peter and Virginia ride the horse through the air in modern Manhattan, or the lost lakeside town Peter finds. And I don't even know how to begin broaching the scene where Pearly goes to visit Lucifer. A Very Famous Actor cameos in the role of the devil, and it's nothing short of absurd. Not only is the Very Famous Actor wildly miscast, he also gives a horrible performance. Then again, everyone in Winter's Tale gives a horrible performance because they're saddled with a horrible screenplay.
Yes, this movie is exquisitely awful. It's muddled, it's confused, it's hard to follow. Things seem to happen for no reason and with no explanation. The attempts at being “magical” fall flat, to the point where they become unintentionally funny. The story, based on a novel by Mark Helprin, attempts to be about the power of miracles, yet is done with such a heavy hand that all meaning is sucked right out. It's almost as though Winter's Tale is standing in your living room, slapping you in the face repeatedly, and yelling, “Be moved, dammit!” Visually, the picture is beautiful. That's all it has going for it. Goldsman simply hasn't written a competent screenplay, so everything onscreen comes across as wildly misguided.
I'd actually recommend Winter's Tale for the WTF?-ness of it all, if only it weren't so ponderous. This is a long two hours. Even the crazy stuff has no energy. You chuckle at the bizarre things the film throws in, but it's never authentically engaging. It doesn't even qualify as “so bad it's good.” I was reminded of M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water, in that both are attempts at building a magical fantasy world by someone who has no clue whatsoever how to go about the task.
Having said all this, I predict eventual cult status for Winter's Tale. It's the kind of thing that will eventually be mocked by the RiffTrax guys. Or, ten years from now, it will pack midnight you-gotta-see-this screenings, much the way Tommy Wiseau's The Room or James Nguyen's Birdemic do. It will live on in infamy.
(
out of four)
Blu-Ray Features:
Winter's Tale arrives on DVD and Blu-Ray combo pack June 24. Although the film itself doesn't work, there's no denying that the picture quality on the disc is superb. The lush visual style and atmospheric weather effects really pop.
There's roughly half an hour of supplementary material. “A Timeless Love” runs six minutes, and features the cast members offering general thoughts on the adaptation. “Characters of Good and Evil” is nine minutes and has Goldsman discussing Peter and Pearly, plus the actors who play them. Farrell and Crowe also chime in on working together. Finally, there are 12 minutes of deleted scenes, some of which fill in gaps related to Virginia and her daughter.
A digital copy of the movie is also included.
Winter's Tale is rated PG-13 for violence and some sensuality. The running time is 1 hour and 58 minutes.
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