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- "Finding Forrester"
(Reviewed November 13, 2000, by James Dawson)
- Sean Connery is an eccentric, reclusive, wealthy and friendless witticism-spouting writer who discovers the simple pleasures of interacting with "real" people when he
strikes up an extremely unlikely friendship with one of them. Gosh, didn't Jack Nicholson already play this guy in "As Good As It Gets?" This time around, Helen Hunt is replaced by a young, gifted and
black teenage boy, there is no cute little dog, and the road trip to Baltimore becomes a night out at Madison Square Garden. But while "As Good As It Gets" was mostly entertaining and fresh, "Finding
Forrester" is overly earnest, preachy and dull.
I did not believe in either Connery's character or the young writer he mentors for a single second of this movie. Here we have a J.D. Salinger type whose genius apparently does not extend to
knowing that wearing sunglasses at night indoors will draw attention, not deflect it. And who apparently can be led into Yankee Stadium--which he professes to have visited nearly every summer day of his
youth--without having any idea where he is.
Meanwhile, his protege is the type of all-wise teen who knows the answer to absolutely every question he is asked at the prep school into which he is thrust on a basketball scholarship. Please.
Director Gus Van Sant even jabs a knowing elbow in the audience's side by slipping Matt Damon (the blue-collar know-it-all student from Van Sant's "Good Will Hunting") into the movie in a last-minute
cameo.
The plot is achingly predictable. (As soon as Connery tells his charge that nothing the two of them write is ever to leave Connery's apartment...well, take a guess.) Supporting actor F. Murray
Abraham essentially reprises his role as the nasty, genius-crushing Salieri from "Amadeus," except devoid of any humility or humanity this time around. Anna Paquin wanders around looking completely
uninvolved in her role as the headmaster's daughter.
Basically, though, I simply did not believe that Connery's character would make a 180-degree personality flip virtually overnight from decades-long hermit to chat-happy tutor. Actually, I never
believed in him as a recluse in the first place. Nicholson played a shuttered misanthrope a whole lot better than twinkly, booming, forceful Connery does here. In other words, Connery never seems to find
his
inner Forrester.
Back Row Grade: F
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