If anyone knows of a fantasy land where I can transplant the entire cast of a movie into better material, please let me know, stat. This film takes a cast containing Winona Ryder, Lukas Haas, John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, James Le Gros, Wiley Wiggins (yes, that one), Chris Cooper, Skeet Ulrich, and Maddie Corman and plunks them down into an underwritten teen soap opera about a teen who finds an injured, troubled older woman after a horseback-riding accident and nurses her back to health. No, really, that's the plot. Along the way he falls in love with her, of course, and multiple reveals are made of plot points which seem so insipid that they should have stayed hidden.
**SPOILERS BELOW**
The movie's big mystery is why Patty (Ryder) is so frightened of the police. She refuses to go to a hospital when she is initially found unconscious in a field and later abandons Haas (her new lover) at a carnival when a cop seems too curious about what she's doing there. Flashbacks slowly reveal that she had left a party drunk with a major league pitcher, also drunk, and he had then driven them into a river. She escaped the sinking car but he didn't. If this was told in chronological order it would make for a movie of such resounding stupidity that it would never have been made even by whoever greenlit the existing version. But the movie is almost worth seeing, in a curious way, if you ignore the plot entirely. You can focus on the performances, which are interesting portraits of all involved at pivotal points in their careers. Ryder was on the way down from a career high she would never recapture, as was Haas; Ulrich was a scant two years from his breakthrough in "Scream". Cooper and Reilly were on the rise as well, though their careers are still strong today. Catherine Keener was probably no one's choice for an indie darling in ten years' time, but she has since carved and defended that niche for herself. It is also possible to focus on the script's many random, abandoned subplots. Wiggins, playing Haas' best friend, at one point erupts into anger and breaks his hand punching a wall. This character trait is never explained, never resurfaces, and is only referenced in a cast Wiggins wears for the rest of the film. There is an extended scene in a Spanish class where the only Spanish word Haas can remember is "zanahorias". It is played for a kind of dark comedy, yet the tone is wrong and the scene has no ultimate point. It is as if the screenwriters took a Robert McKee seminar, made a negative of it, and then did everything he instructs you not to do. The film is a perplexing artifact of its time, but when you have to go this far outside the story to find the interesting parts, you're probably better served by something else.
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4 comments:
This movie was a cataclysmic mess that was torture for everyone involved. The director stopped halfway through to fire a little kid for no reason, reshot scenes ridiculous numbers of times over bizarre ideas that she had that didn't work in real life (like pumping a classroom full of smoke to make it look 'dreamy'). The whole production was put on hold for months and everyone went home, eventually being dragged back to finish. The director was kicked off the movie by the studio in post production, but their plan to save the film was to dub over all the cursing in the hopes that making it PG-13 would get a few little girls in seats to look at the actors, who weren't exactly bankable hearthrob material (Skeet Ulrich? Lukas Haas?). It was an agonizing process that made one of the actors vow never to do another studio movie and switch careers. (can you guess which one?)
Wow, thanks for the insight. Sounds like you were involved in the production in some way; I'd love to hear more stories.
As for who switched careers...if you mean a main actor in the film I might guess Wiley Wiggins. The only thing I remember him in after this is "Waking Life" which is definitely not a studio movie. If it was one of the minor actors I don't have a clue!
bingo
I'm patting myself on the back for guessing that! Thanks again for your stories, and any more you might have that are less suitable for public airing can be addressed to me at dreamofhorses at gmail dot com. Otherwise thanks for bringing much-needed discussion to my little blog!
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