Wow. I knew from the previews that The Legend of Bagger Vance was going to suck, but I didn't think it would suck this much. Even Matt Damon in a wet shirt can't save it. In this latest exhibit of Robert Redford's senility, Damon plays Rannulph Junuh, a golfing wunderkind in early 20th-century Savannah who takes leave of the game -- and the rest of his life -- after a horrifying experience in World War I (which is rendered in very genteel tones, sort of like if Merchant-Ivory made Saving Private Ryan). But ten years later, to save his ex-girlfriend's dead father's golf resort (don't ask) and the honor of Savannah, Junuh agrees to take part in a golf exhibition match that, through some unexplained process, will evidently pull the entire city out of the Great Depression. And, of course, the only person who believes in him is a little boy who never lost faith (stop me if you've heard this one before). A mystical yet sassy caddy (no kidding -- he's sort of Mr. Miyagi, Big Willie style) named Bagger Vance (Will Smith) wanders out of the mist to deliver goofy truisms, like "You lost your swing. We got to go find it" (which made me think of the nauseating line from City Slickers about Billy Crystal going to find his smile). Amazingly, Junuh finds his swing about 15 seconds later (which made me think that Bagger Vance would be extremely useful around the house -- "You lost your remote. We got to go find it." And 15 seconds later, poof, there it is! -- or as a psychiatrist -- if he can cure people in 15 seconds, the HMOs would love him).
So, you would think that's the end of the movie, but you'd be wrong. Because Junuh seems to have a problem holding on to his swing -- he loses it in the next scene and makes a fool of himself in the first round of the big end-the-Depression-save-the-resort-win-back-the-girl match. This is pretty much where we walked out. I may have trouble sleeping tonight, wondering how things turned out (that was sarcasm), but the howlingly bad writing and the absurdly hokey clichés stopped being funny after about an hour.
I'm not even going to mention Jack Lemmon's interminable narration that seems to take up half the film, or how annoying the little boy who follows Junuh around is, or Charlize Theron's hair-raising attempt at Southern belle-dom. And it doesn't help that the film is about golf. I lost count of the number of shots of a little white ball hitting the ground. George Carlin once said, "Watching golf on TV is like watching flies fuck," and I can attest that it's not much more gripping on the big screen, either. Part of the problem (besides the fact that I hate golf) is that when I see a shot of a pristine, glowingly green golf course (which is, I assume, meant to stir something within me), all I can think about are all the trees cut down, the wetlands filled in, the animals exterminated to create it, not to mention the gallons of chemicals keeping it that unnatural green and then befouling the nearest water source, and the uncounted gophers blown up by crazed groundskeepers. I think maybe you can't make a good dramatic movie about golf; when you compare a movie to Happy Gilmore, and Happy Gilmore comes out on top... that's bad.
Robert Redford has lost his swing. And he got to go find it before he makes another movie.
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