Miramax and director Lasse Hallstrom are going for the trifecta.
"The Shipping News" is the third film they have collaborated on and
released in December, hoping for Oscar and financial glory. In 1999
it was "The Cider House Rules" and last year it was "Chocolat." Both
of those films did good business and snagged a number of Academy
Award nominations.
"The Shipping News," based on the popular novel by E. Annie Proulx, has been adapted for the screen by "Chocolat" scribe Robert Nelson Jacobs. Will it be as fortunate as Hallstrom's last two films? Hopefully, no, because it's not nearly as good as "Cider House" and "Chocolat," and even those two are highly overrated.
Kevin Spacey, who shamelessly overacted in October's "K-Pax," is much more subdued this time around. He plays Quoyle, a simple, quiet and decent man with rotten luck. The beginning shows his father trying to teach him how to swim. He tosses young Quoyle in some deep water and watches him nearly drown, which understandably makes Quoyle "not a water person."
{INSERT_RELATED}As an adult, Quoyle has held a number of odd jobs. His latest is as an ink setter for a small newspaper in upstate New York and he loves it.
One day at a gas station, Quoyle sees a woman fighting with her boyfriend. She walks away from him and into Quoyle's car. Later, while they're having dinner, she tells him that they'll be sleeping together within two hours (though not in those words). And of course she's right.
The woman is named Petal (Cate Blanchett). Soon she is pregnant, and after giving birth to a girl, Bunny, she takes off. As the years go by, she shows up every once in a while, sometimes with a new guy. Quoyle is always patiently awaiting her return, hoping that they can reconcile even though Petal is an awful person.
Then, for the first time, when Petal leaves town she takes Bunny with her. Quoyle gets a phone call from the police late one night. Bunny is fine, but Petal has died in a car accident. She sold Bunny for $6,000 before the car she was in took a dive off a bridge. Luckily, the police find Bunny and return her to Quoyle.
That same night, Quoyle's Aunt Agnis (Judi Dench, in a part she has played thousands of times by now) shows up. She comes with tales of Quoyle's family's past, and before long Quoyle, Bunny and Agnis are off for Newfoundland.
In Newfoundland, they are all starting over. Quoyle tries to get a job as an ink setter at the local paper, and instead becomes a reporter. He also meets beautiful single mom Wavey (Julianne Moore).
By now, "The Shipping News" is off to a solid, if familiar, start. The Newfoundland scenery is breathtaking, aided by Oliver Stapleton's cinematography. He and Hallstrom seize every opportunity to use wide shots of the beautiful countryside and rocky shores.
The town is full of colorful characters, and they are played by an outstanding supporting cast that includes Scott Glenn as the newspaper's editor, Pete Postlethwaite as the managing editor, Rhys Ifans as the foreign news editor and Gordon Pinsent, in a lively and funny scene stealing performance, as a man who shows Quoyle how to word catchy headlines.
But around the halfway point, "The Shipping News" takes a turn for the worse and it never looks back. It becomes melodramatic and predictable, favoring the painfully obvious and cliched. Sappy and groan inducing dialogue (most of it spoken by Moore's character) becomes more and more of a presence as times goes by.
Had the focus stayed on Quoyle, his past and his struggles to raise his daughter alone in a new, unfamiliar place, "The Shipping News" would have been on solid ground. Instead it tries to incorporate everyone's past, and everyone has a past as tragic as Quoyle's.
The romance between Quoyle and Wavey is also a problem. It isn't developed enough and doesn't sell. The movie would have been fine without it. All it adds is bad dialogue and the overly familiar.
The cast clearly had trouble with the heavy accents of the region. Spacey and Moore's in particular come and go randomly. Her role is also underwritten, and she has been much better. This role is way beneath her talents.
It's also quite disturbing that the film uses a horrific event in Agnis's past and plays it for laughs in the beginning, only to reveal the true nature of it near the end. It's tasteless and disgusting.
By the time it reaches a rushed, abrupt conclusion, "The Shipping News" has become a tedious bore. It never strikes a comfortable balance between comedy, drama and romance, and it feels like a product more than anything else, which it is. Miramax wants Oscars, and that becomes more important than telling a good story.
"The Shipping News" opens in select local theaters on Christmas Day. Click here for showtimes.
