Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
10/11/09
Ladies and gentlemen, Hell
has frozen over. Or, to put it more aptly, the business for movies
pitched at adults has gone to Hell to the point that Freestyle Releasing,
the do-it-yourself for-hire distributor of movies no one else wanted to
release, has finally put its' own name (and not the boutique Yari Film
Group label under which they unveiled The Illusionist and Resurrecting
the Champ) to an honest-to-goodness GOOD movie. After foisting
Dragon Wars, Skinwalkers
and In the Name of the King: A
Dungeon Siege Tale, among others, upon an unsuspecting public, Freestyle
makes some amends with My One and Only, an adorable little 50's-era
road trip comedy based on the teen years of movie star/raconteur George
Hamilton. Its episodic narrative opening roles for innumerable familiar
faces and fronted by another of Renee Zellweger's delightful period performances,
My One and Only is the kind of genetically-engineered crowd-pleaser
you didn't used to need self-service distribution to get out to the public.
But perhaps in the movie business's current dark hour, we'll be glad to
have Freestyle around.
It's 1953, and 15 year-old
George Deveraux (Logan Lerman) arrives at a car dealership with thousands
of dollars in hand and his eye on one of their Cadillacs. He explains
to the salespeople that his mother gave him the money, and in fact Anne
Deveraux (Renee Zellweger) had just walked in on her bandleader husband
Dan (Kevin Bacon) cheating on her with another in a long line of girls.
Enraged, she packs her bags, cleans out their shared safe deposit box and
takes her two sons, George and Robbie (Mark Rendall) on the road in that
car in search of a new husband. Effeminate Robbie loves clothes and
is forever working on a needlepoint: he wasn't Dan's son anyway and
doesn't mind going on the road except that he seems to win the lead in
the class play at every stop on the trip without ever sticking around long
enough to actually reach Opening Night. But George is frustrated.
He wanted to stay in New York with Dan, and deludes himself that his father
wants him there too. But on the road he stays as they travel first
to Boston, where she bounces back from a disastrous attempt to court former
flame Wallace (Steven Webber) by becoming engaged to Harlan (Chris Noth),
a military man with a very bad temper. This leads them to Pittsburgh,
where George makes a friend (Molly Quinn) who might have been more while
Anne seeks out wealthy Charlie (Eric McCormack). Rejection and arrest
send them to St. Louis, where they stay with Anne's disapproving sister
(Robin Weigert) while she strikes up a relationship with local businessman
Bill Massey (David Koechner). As one disappointment piles on top
of another and George grows more and more rebellious, Anne sticks to her
motto: everything will work out in the end.
How much of My One and
Only is true, only the people in that car will ever know for sure,
but it's appropriate that this chapter in George Hamilton's life be mythologized
at least a tad, since it's his larger-than-life celebrity that's been at
least as responsible for his fame as his acting. And this is a story
you'd want to be true, whether it was or not. It's easy to see the
seeds of the adult Hamilton in the combination of Zellweger's aphorism-spouting
optimist Anne and Bacon's oily showman Dan, and Loman plays young George
as a born charmer and storyteller. A quick scan of his bio on various
websites tells me more about what My One and Only leaves out (namely,
a lot of extra marriages for both Dan and Anne during the period the movie
covers) than what it lets in, but who wouldn't want to look back on their
youth and imagine it as a fairy tale origin story? As such, my inner
fact-checker doesn't mind giving the movie a pass.
It's a pure actor's showcase,
and as such it's loaded for bear with familiar faces doing quality work
for veteran director Richard Loncraine. Zellweger's performance echoes
her work in Appaloosa, playing a similar character
hoping to turn her charm into a nuptial safety net. There's something
about her that just seems right in any time period, and the 50's are no
exception. She does a lot to sell this story by taking a larger-than-life
character that could easily have been a caricature and dusting her edges
with real hope and disappointment, though she always soldiers on.
Lerman does a great job flashing the starpower and charisma that would
later make his character a movie star while still seeming very much like
a teen (his awkwardness during a date at a drive-in movie feels especially
authentic). Rendall is a delight as a kid very much out of his time.
I liked the fact that only passing reference is made throughout the movie
to the fact that Robbie is clearly gay: it's not something people
would have talked about. Bacon drips showbiz insincerity, but has
a nice way of darting his eyes toward the floor to suggest her knows exactly
how much of a heel he is. Best among the suitors, Koechner is the
reigning master of the fascinating dullard, and he's got a golden scene
where he tells George everything he knows about women: always keep
a sweater or jacket nearby in case they get cold. Noth does a great
job of seeming like a buffoon until the true extent of his violent temper
is revealed. Weigert is a hoot as the sister who doesn't try to hide
her contempt for Anne's ability to land on her feet, and J.C. Mackenzie
is sensational in his few quiet moments as her roll-with-the-punches husband.
Two of the movie's best performances
come in similarly quiet roles in the Pittsburgh scenes. Quinn has
an Old Soul stillness that suits her wonderfully in her TV role as the
hero's wise daughter on Castle, and here she's got a few magical
scenes with Lerman, her every word seeming to be a question he doesn't
know the answer to. Nick Stahl plays her older brother, a mechanic
famed for barely speaking, until he becomes smitten with Anne, knowing
full well that he in no way resembles the finish line on her matrimonial
road trip. There's a quiet masculinity to Stahl here that fits perfectly
into the time and that I've never seen from him before. Best of all,
while they barely exchange a single line of dialog, he and Quinn radiate
shared experiences the story doesn't even hint at.
This is a career high point
for veteran screenwriter Charlie Peters, who's been churning out marquee-filler
comedies dating back to 1981's Burt Reynolds vehicle Paternity.
But here he's got a wonderful grasp of human nature, the ebbs and flows
of fate, and the way people's attempts to be happy always seem to put them
at cross-purposes with the people they wish were happy too. Things
get a bit messy in the third act as the family breaks up and then comes
back together at least one and possibly two more times than it needs to
before an ending we see coming at least three states away, but it's hard
to argue with the fairy tale fates of characters we feel this sort of attachment
to. And I have to give the art and costume departments their due:
while thanking all the thrift shops in Baltimore over the end credits,
they've manged to give everything a look that feels both totally of its'
time and totally lived in. Most movies set in the past feel like
everyone bought their entire wardrobe and had their house built the day
before the story begins, but this is an effectively working-class 50's
that feels like it had been up and running long before the Deveraux clan
arrived.
My One and Only (named,
oddly, for a fictional song billed as Dan's only hit, although he was a
real person who presumably wrote real songs) is a sweet, nostalgic comic
drama of the sort it's hard to imagine you not liking if it sounds like
your kind of thing. And it puts a whole new spin on a guy who never
appears on-screen. Just like I'll never look at the little skateboarding
animated Freestyle Releasing logo guy the same way again. |
