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.
If you’ve ever read the children’s book series Clifford, you know it’s about a white family that lets an impossibly large red dog into their home. Despite his monstrous size, they choose to love him and train him to not only fit into society but succeed and become popular.
So if The Blind Side was a movie version of that book, choosing to replace the big red dog with a large black football player, it’d be pretty good. But no, this is a failed attempt at fictionalizing a true story. This movie is so devoid of real conflict and so literally black-and-white in its view of the world that it makes the underlying story seem preposterous.
The film is named after a football term – the side of a quarterback that he can’t see, and therefore is unprotected from except for his offensive line – but by the end of this movie you’ll want to take the title literally and gouge out your own eyes to avoid witnessing one more agonizing moment.
Sandra Bullock plays lead character Leigh Anne Tuohy, a Tennessee suburbanite who has it all – a high-paying job as a home designer, a husband that owns several local restaurants, and two obedient children (though one may be an evil leprechaun.) One night on a drive home, she spots lonely and aimless Michael Oher (played by Quinton Aaron) walking along the streets, with nowhere to go.
Forgetting this is a person and not a lost puppy, she pulls over and picks him up. What looks like a one-night arrangement quickly turns into something more long term, as Tuohy’s pet project fully takes hold.
Starting with the scene where Tuohy sheepishly asks her husband if they can keep Michael, the uncomfortable comparison to a family pet becomes more obvious as this movie ambles along without thought. Tuohy learns that Michael scored well in his “protective instincts” section of the aptitude test and hastily proceeds to treat him as a watch dog. She even encourages him by saying “good boy” at one point.
It’s almost a surprise Michael didn’t lick her face in response, with the stupid happiness of a border collie.
The Tuohy family trains Clifford – I mean Michael – to excel in school and on the football field. His freakish size also helps with the latter part, and he actually just sort of scrapes by with a bare minimum grade. Still, the achievements are put forth as nothing short of miraculous.
The racist undertones of the movie also cause a general uneasiness. The film sells the American dream as some sort of weird mix of Catholic-brand Christianity mixed with guns, football and SUVs. It also implies the ticket to that dream is exclusive to being white – if not in colour, then certainly in lifestyle.
Michael’s only progress in the movie is made when he conforms to the white society around him – first at a Christian school, then in the Tuohy household and on the football team. The only time his success is remotely threatened is when he returns to his old “ghetto” and his black past threatens to ruin his white future.
To really hammer home the thin race stereotypes in this movie, here are some clichéd utterances delivered with straight-faced earnest by the cast:
What makes matters worse is the clichés don’t even hold up a story that seems worth telling. Michael’s bumbling but assured progress to NFL stardom is assured through the movie, without any real agitation to his unique predicament.
When tension does arise, it is for a ridiculous reason. Michael’s major personal introspection is triggered by a paranoid NCAA regulation about where he plays college football. There were so many other worthy opportunities for conflict that using red tape as the catalyst seems like the writers were lost.
When it comes to The Blind Side, see no evil and avoid watching this movie. Instead, check out a couple of Clifford books.
There’s nothing worse than being left out of an inside joke. It’s isolating, awkward and difficult for the greenhorn left to wonder what those around him are laughing about.
To watch A Serious Man is like a two-hour exercise in being the hapless sucker left out of an inside joke – which isn’t a very good one to begin with. Joel and Ethan Cohen have enjoyed rampant success in Hollywood for their stunning series of films that are sometimes dramatic and other times comedic, but are always dark and always contain tongue-in-cheek examinations of human habits and behavior.