Hollywoodland (15.)
Directed by Allen Coulter.
Starring Ben Affleck, Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Lois Smith. 126 mins
Hollywoodland is a fairly desperate fishing trip around the events of the suicide/ murder of 50’s TV Superman actor George Reeves that fails to come up with anything particularly illuminating and is ultimately a bit of waste of time.
It employs an awkward parallel time frame structure: one charts the progress of Reeves (Affleck) through 50’s Hollywood, starting with him becoming the lover of Toni (Lane) the wife of studio exec Edgar Mannix (Hoskins); the other takes place after his death, as a seedy private eye Louis Simo (Brody) investigates the death of the man who was his son’s hero. The film flicks between the two in an arbitrarily fashion and though Simo’s investigation should be the interesting strand every time it switches you resent being pulled away from the Reeves tale, probably because Affleck is so much more comfortable in his role than Brody.
For Affleck this role represents a huge step back from celebrity clowndom. He’s very good but although he won the Best Actor prize at Venice I wouldn’t want to build his performance up as some kind of grand actorly tour de force; he just does the job and with the minimum of fuss.
It’s something we tend to forget about Affleck; he’s basically quite good. His problem was that he was promoted beyond his abilities, rising to the rank of superstar during a movie star drought of the late 90’s, when there were more movie star roles than there were stars to fill them. After the various indignities of Pearl Harbour, Paycheck, Gigli and just about every film he’s been in since Boiler Room, the temptation when handed a half decent role must have been to overdo it. That he goes about it like it was no big deal is rather classy.
In comparison, Brody makes very hard work of Simo. No matter how often he unwraps a stick of gum or takes a swig from a bottle of bourbon he isn’t fooling anyone; this hardboiled detective is just a big softie. It’s like casting Phillip Schofield in The Sweeney.
Viewers always love a tale of decadent Hollywood but ultimately George Reeves’s story is just a bit too small time to grip and I doubt audiences are really hungry for a film where every leading character is repellent, and repellent to so little effect. The title comes from the original version of the giant Hollywood sign in the hills above Los Angeles. The sign lost the Land part in 1949 before most of the events of this movie – so even the title is an irrelevance.
Hollywoodland (15.)
Directed by Allen Coulter.
Starring Ben Affleck, Adrien Brody, Diane Lane, Bob Hoskins, Lois Smith. 126 mins
Hollywoodland is a fairly desperate fishing trip around the events of the suicide/ murder of 50’s TV Superman actor George Reeves that fails to come up with anything particularly illuminating and is ultimately a bit of waste of time.
It employs an awkward parallel time frame structure: one charts the progress of Reeves (Affleck) through 50’s Hollywood, starting with him becoming the lover of Toni (Lane) the wife of studio exec Edgar Mannix (Hoskins); the other takes place after his death, as a seedy private eye Louis Simo (Brody) investigates the death of the man who was his son’s hero. The film flicks between the two in an arbitrarily fashion and though Simo’s investigation should be the interesting strand every time it switches you resent being pulled away from the Reeves tale, probably because Affleck is so much more comfortable in his role than Brody.
For Affleck this role represents a huge step back from celebrity clowndom. He’s very good but although he won the Best Actor prize at Venice I wouldn’t want to build his performance up as some kind of grand actorly tour de force; he just does the job and with the minimum of fuss.
It’s something we tend to forget about Affleck; he’s basically quite good. His problem was that he was promoted beyond his abilities, rising to the rank of superstar during a movie star drought of the late 90’s, when there were more movie star roles than there were stars to fill them. After the various indignities of Pearl Harbour, Paycheck, Gigli and just about every film he’s been in since Boiler Room, the temptation when handed a half decent role must have been to overdo it. That he goes about it like it was no big deal is rather classy.
In comparison, Brody makes very hard work of Simo. No matter how often he unwraps a stick of gum or takes a swig from a bottle of bourbon he isn’t fooling anyone; this hardboiled detective is just a big softie. It’s like casting Phillip Schofield in The Sweeney.
Viewers always love a tale of decadent Hollywood but ultimately George Reeves’s story is just a bit too small time to grip and I doubt audiences are really hungry for a film where every leading character is repellent, and repellent to so little effect. The title comes from the original version of the giant Hollywood sign in the hills above Los Angeles. The sign lost the Land part in 1949 before most of the events of this movie – so even the title is an irrelevance.
