Everything I've read about this movie uses the term "Capra-esque" to describe it (must be in the press kit), but I got the feeling that director Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) never actually saw a Capra movie; he just read about them. Capra's films had streaks of cynicism and despair running through them; they had to, otherwise there'd be nothing for mom-and-apple-pie populism to overcome. But The Majestic has no conflict, except for intermittent appearances by McCarthyite Red hunters that seem surprisingly unthreatening, and while opportunities for despair are plentiful, either Darabont or Carrey declined to express that emotion. The Majestic is a tiresomely simple, Disneyfied version of Capra, where all the sad things have been taken out and the messy emotions prettied up.
Carrey plays a screenwriter hoping to get off B-movies and onto the A-list, and just when it seems he might do it, he's accused of being a Communist sympathizer and loses his job, girlfriend, and prospects in one fell swoop. Where Frank Capra might have let us spend a little time glimpsing the depths of Carrey's despair (perhaps a suicide attempt?), Frank Darabont gives us one scene in a bar where Carrey gets drunk, and that's about it. Carrey decides to just drive up the coast, which is how he meets his doom in the form of a slippery bridge and a weak railing. The car takes an amazingly long time to fall, and even though it falls upside down with Carrey inside it, he is apparently unharmed until he comes up for air and whacks his head on the bridge pilings. He wakes up on a beach with no memory of who he is and is taken by a kindly old man to an adorable little town, where he is recognized as Martin Landau's son who went missing in action ten years earlier in WWII.
This small town is unbelievable. The town doctor literally gives Carrey the shirt off his back. The entire town turns out to watch Carrey's reunion with "his" girl (the extraordinarily plastic-looking Laurie Holden, who seems to be wearing a cheap wig and a painted-on tan). Every building in sight (except one) is immaculate, freshly painted in cheerful colors, suffering none of the deterioration often seen in coastal towns due to the salt air -- I found myself thinking of Carrey's town in The Truman Show. (Having seen The Shipping News earlier in the day, I couldn't help comparing their depictions of small-town life: folks in the Newfoundland village in TSN rallied around their people as well, but in a subtle way, offering help casually. In The Majestic's town, the good people seem to travel everywhere en masse to show their support.)
Landau takes Carrey "home" to the Majestic movie theater. He ceased operating the theater after his son disappeared, yet its two employees have evidently been hanging around the lobby for the past decade (one of them, the elderly usher, reminded me of Nicolas Cage's cellmate in Raising Arizona -- "When there was no meat, we ate fowl. When there was no fowl, we ate crawdads. When there was no crawdads to be found, we ate sand." -- but I checked the IMDB, and it's not the same guy). The Majestic is the only building that the apparently anal-retentive town fathers haven't touched; it's decrepit inside and out. But gosh golly gee whillikers, wouldn't you know it, now that Carrey is home, the whole town pitches in to get the theater back into tip-top shape. Awwwwwww.
Naturally, one of the movies that comes to the refurbished Majestic is Sand Pirates of the Sahara, which triggers Carrey's memory of who he really is. At that exact moment, Landau suffers a heart attack. The doc says, "There's not much time." This is where I got up and left the theater, because I knew exactly what was going to happen from that point on, and given the bus schedules, if I left now, I could be home by 10:15; if I left later, I wouldn't get home till 11:30. I knew that Carrey would be faced with the choice of telling the dying Landau who he really was or keeping up the pretense of being his son until the old man croaked (he'll pretend). The feds would finally track him down, and we would have a stirring hearing-room scene where Carrey would denounce both Communism and McCarthyism. He would then settle down in the idyllic little town with his pretty, brainy girlfriend, forswearing the treachery and soullessness of Hollywood, possibly continuing to write movies, but on his terms, which of course would be of the highest integrity. Cue swelling music, lurid sunset, and old people in the audience rubbing at their eyes while the younger folk bolt for the doors making gagging noises.
Anything that might have been interesting gets nipped in the bud. For instance, though he can't remember who he is, Carrey remembers movie scenes perfectly (I like to think that's how I'd be if I ever got amnesia). I thought it would have been a neat trick to use throughout the movie -- when he can't remember how he's supposed to react to something, he could do it the way he remembered from a movie. But it comes up once and then never again.
I'm very disappointed in Jim Carrey. After the promise he showed in serious roles in The Truman Show and Man on the Moon, I expected some level of accomplishment, but he's terrible. When he's accused of being a communist and loses everything, he looks slightly peeved. When confronted with being unable to remember who he is, he shows mild befuddlement. Not that anyone else in the cast outshines him. Martin Landau is depressingly insipid (and he looks like some demented wax figure, with white hair, jet-black eyebrows, and lips so red he seems to be wearing lipstick). Laurie Holden may as well be an automaton. Everyone else is just playing a stereotype, and badly at that. And Bruce Campbell, as I said, hardly appears at all.
The only
thing I could possibly recommend this movie for is if you have
to go see something with your elderly relatives over Christmas, and you
want something inoffensive, uncontroversial, and completely void of
anything
that could provoke any kind of reaction in anyone. Then The
Majestic is your ticket. Otherwise, stay away.
Back to homepage
Reviews A to F
Reviews G to L
Reviews M to R
Reviews S to Z
Search