As a critic, there are several reasons why I should dislike this movie: its predictable plot and outcome, the treacly sentiment oozing throughout, and the liberal use of stereotypical characters, to name a few. But as a writer and literature student, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It is the very natural performances of the two leads who save this from being just another "feel-good movie of the year."
Gus Van Sant has really just made a rehash of his earlier film, Good Will Hunting, but you can tell he really has a soft spot for the gifted kids, and you really can't fault him for that. But what's next, Gus, Gathering Nuts and Berries, about two orphans (named Nuts and Berries) with an untapped gift for organic chemistry? Perhaps Van Sant really does direct as he is portrayed (by himself, no less) as doing in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back: oblivious to what's going on, sitting off-set and counting his money (which would certainly explain how the film's clapboard slate made it into the opening shot--yes, I know it was done on purpose).
Anyway, any lack of originality in the concept is more than made up for by the energy Sean Connery and Rob Brown bring to their roles. Brown plays Jamal Wallace, a 16-year-old boy from a rough Bronx neighbourhood, who loves playing basketball almost as much as he loves writing--though the latter is something he'd rather keep hidden, lest he lose his street cred. Sean Connery is William Forrester (hence the title), a reclusive writer who once wrote the Great American Novel (think Salinger) but now prefers to spend his time staring out the window of his Bronx apartment, where he lives in anonymity. One day he spots Jamal, and from then on, it's true love.
Well, not exactly. First, Jamal breaks into Forrester's apartment and Forrester scares the heck out of us (okay, me) when he spots him. The two bicker a bit, Forrester finds out that Jamal can actually write, and an unlikely friendship forms. It's nice that a lot of the friendship formation happens off-camera, in that we don't have to see them sharing every single detail of their lives with one another, but we know they're close just by the ease with which they converse.
Forrester helps Jamal find his voice and opens him up as a writer, while at the same time opening himself up as a person. The scene with the two of them clicking away on typewriters is my favourite, because it really gives you a raw, almost tactile sense of what it means to write. In fact, it made me want to go buy a typewriter. I really liked Forrester's advice to Jamal to write first, think later (Lord knows I do that all the time), because "you write the first draft with your heart, the second draft with your head." William Forrester himself looks and lives how every writer feels inside: chaotic, dishevelled, and a little (or possibly very) drunk. But at the same time, he seems totally at peace when he's in his element.
The only thing that ruined this movie for me was its ending. While I could have done without the tedium of the plagiarism plotline, at least that was somewhat necessary to the mechanism of the film. I would have been happy if the film had ended how I thought it was going to, before the "few years later" segment. Besides a self-serving and gratuitous cameo from an actor whose name I won't reveal, the "extended" ending felt tacked on, and didn't add much to the feelings I had at the end of the previous scene. If anything, the ending cheapened them. Memo to Gus Van Sant: put the money stacks down and hire a better editor.
-reviewed by the ladybug, May 17, 2002 |
