Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
1/20/09
As longtime readers know,
I have a love/hate relationship with romantic comedies, and one reason
why is that they're very rarely actually about love. Infactuation,
flirtation, a crush, stalking; whatever you call it, spotting someone across
a crowded room, bumping into them a couple times and then twisting yourself
into a knot of contrivance trying to get a date isn't actually romance,
no matter how much the movies might have conditioned us to think so.
It's not that those elements (and worse) aren't in play in the plot of
Last
Chance Harvey, Joel Hopkins' new Dustin Hoffman/Emma Thompson vehicle,
but they share time with that rarest of movie events: extended sequences
of a couple actually talking. Harvey is so good for so long that
it's kinda depressing when it not only succumbs to formula, but does so
badly, but the relationship at its' core is so good, and so well-acted,
that I was willing to forgive a lot.
Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman)
writes background music for commercials in New York, and he's clearly on
the way out at the agency he works for. Kate Walker (Emma Thompson)
conducts surveys at Heathrow Airport in London, and her personal life consists
entirely of looking in on her lonely, divorced mother Maggie (Eileen Atkins).
Harvey flies to England on the eve of a particularly important presentation
to attend the wedding of his estranged daughter Susan (Liane Balaban).
It's not a hard estrangement so much as just that nobody much wants Harvey
around, particularly not his ex-wife Jean (Kathy Baker) or her husband
Brian (James Brolin). Susan's so over Harvey and so fond of Brian
that she actually informs her Dad that he's out of the wedding party, and
Brian will be giving her away. Oh, and his boss (Richard Schiff)
calls to let him know he's fired. Harvey shows up in the airport
lounge to have a whole lot of drinks and starts chatting up Kate, who's
trying to read away the memory of a truly awful date the night before.
There are sparks, and he NEEDS someone to talk to, so much so that he just
starts... following her around. Harvey allows Kate to convince him
to go to Susan's reception, but only if she agrees to come as his date.
As Harvey and Kate's day together stretches through the night and into
the morning, could there actually be a future for this odd couple?
A story like this needs great
actors to pull it off, and Harvey finds two of our best on the supporting
cast scrap heap upon which Hollywood cheerfully tosses aging stars.
Nobody's better at playing wounded feelings than Hoffman, and being older
is just another underdog asset for a man who's always been the movies'
most effectively short hero. It's good that neither he nor the movie
never expects us to think that Harvey was a good father or that he didn't
make the bed in which he now lies professionally. But that air of
desperate cheerfulness in the face of despair that comes so easily to him
begs for a second chance, and that's the whole point of the enterprise.
It's surprising how easy it is for Thompson to tweak her awesomeness into
spinsterhood, but the movie achieves that simply by providing her with
a world in which there's no one else like her. And her quiet sadness
while sitting on the outside of life looking in is very effective without
making us doubt for a moment that she'd be the life of the party if it
was just the right one.
Last Chance Harvey
is a pure star vehicle, and the stars have such great chemistry I wanted
to just watch them do their thing, battle their characters' issues together
and then cruise into the sunset. Alas, Hopkins HAS seen a romantic
comedy or two and conspired to trip them up with a third act crisis so
hideously contrived Iraqi audiences would no doubt throw shoes at the screen.
And then, suddenly, these two wonderful characters, so well played, are
stuck babbling and apologizing their way through the same sort of dreck
Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson might reunite for. For a few
moments at the end, the ship is finally righted, and I'll accept the movie's
apology... sort of.
The supporting cast gets
the job done. Balaban walks the line perfectly between wishing her
father were different and wishing he was just gone. Baker is so hurtful
and Brolin so perfect, both deserve a slap. Atkins is quite funny
as Kate's Mom, obsessed with the notion that her neighbor is an ax murderer.
The movie is quietly funny in a very British way.
But Last Chance Harvey
is mostly a character study of the kind that can actually make you believe
in a relationship: this is why these people are empty, this is how
they connect, this is why they might have a future together. Hoffman
and Thompson are superb, just as they were when they last worked together
in the awesome Stranger Than Fiction, just as they pretty much always
are. Even if their movie lets them down at times, I really liked
and believed in these people. Let's check back in with Harvey and
Kate in 5 years and I bet they're still together. Most romantic comedy
couples can't possibly work out: what would the sequel be about? |
