The premise may seem far-fetched, but not if you consider that Morocco offered bomb-sniffing monkeys to the “coalition of the willing” for the Iraq War. The leader of the G-Force team is an unconventional human scientist named Ben. The guinea pigs are cast as racial stereotypes.
Watching Crazy Heart is much like enduring your drunken Uncle at an extra long Christmas dinner.
If Jeff Bridge’s character “Bad Blake” wasn’t bluntly established in every scene, you might almost mistake him for a bad impersonator of old Elvis – complete with sweat-stained clothing, folksy attitude and penchant for fried foods. But this movie has set out on just one cowboy-riding-into-the-sunset inspired mission – meet Bad Blake.
Too bad he’s such an insufferable character and the staging done to sell him as a washed-up country singer is hackneyed and predictable. In the opening scene, Blake is headlining a concert in a bowling alley. One where he’s denied free booze and shown up by his supporting band. Blake must run from the stage to puke in a back-alley garbage can lest he spray the audience with country-fried regurgitation in mid-song.
As if that’s not bad enough, the chick he takes home from the bar is some sort of red-headed pirate hooker.
If there’s any doubt left over the premise of this movie, the first song murmured by Blake drives it home with a bulldozer. “I used to be somebody,” he croaks, “now I’m somebody else.”
Blake is a 57-year-old (going on 80) country singer that is broke and stringing out the dregs of his once lustrous career. But things start to look up for this surly drunk when he meets gorgeous journalist Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who seems romantically interested in Blake despite being half his age. Then again, when has that stopped Hollywood?
While he aimlessly pursues the ill-fated romance, his career is delivered an electric shock to bring it back from the dead. Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), a past muse of Blake’s, has made it big and now wants his mentor to write songs for him. There’s about a five-second window where the audience feels there might be some intrigue as we get an insider’s view of the country music business – but then Blake just falls asleep while driving his truck and is injured.
To make matters worse, the audience is forced to actually listen to country music at several points throughout the film. As if seeing Bridge’s hairy, naked belly wasn’t torture enough.
The potentially more interesting plot is exchanged for one in which the ultimate moral message seems to be “don’t get drunk around kids”. Unfortunately, any sober person forced to witness this entire movie will be driven to drink soon afterwards in order to erase the image of a half-naked Jeff Bridges. Since he is half-naked for much of the film, much drinking is required.
We watch Blake hobble around on crutches, collapse on a bathroom floor in a hangover, and go fishing as he also bumbles his way through a long distance romance. Craddock’s character seems to suffer development at the expense of Blake’s, as she swoons and falls into his arms as he takes a swig from his flask.
Crazy Heart is at times shot like it was put together by a high school A/V club – the camera sways around and the lighting is too dark to make out any details.
After making a mis
take involving Craddock’s four-year-old boy that puts a great divide between them, Blake decides to sober up. He attends an alcoholics anonymous meeting and once again sums up the point of the movie. “I’ve been drunk most of my life,” he says, “lost a hell of a lot.”
Sobering up seems relatively painless for Blake once he decides to do it. A couple of fried biscuits and packs of cigarettes later, he’s trimmed his beard and washed his shirt to signify his-new found sobriety.
The movie ends on a bittersweet note as Blake’s career is rekindled, but his romance is snuffed out.
Then the cheesy temptation of putting the movie title into the script proves to be irresistible for the script writers, as “Crazy Heart” is the song Blake writes as a result of his recent experiences.
It’s a wonder Bridges managed an Oscar win for this tumbleweed of a film. He acts just as we expect he does in real life – surly, unshaven and drunk.
Tags: Bad Blake, Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal