Tag Archives: C-

MAYBE I DO

Producers: Michael Jacobs   Director: Michael Jacobs, Scott Mednick and Vincent Newman   Screenplay: Michael Jacobs   Cast: Diane Keaton, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, William H. Macy, Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey, DazMann Still, Michael Kostroff and Adrienne Lovette   Distributor: Vertical Entertainment

Grade: C-

Established writers must often look back wistfully on their early indiscretions, believing that a do-over could turn a disappointment into a hit.  Most resist the temptation to try surgery, but Michael Jacobs, an occasional playwright who found his greatest fame in television sitcoms (he created “Boy Meets World,” which ran for seven seasons, among others) has succumbed.  His first film as a writer-director is identified as based on one of his plays, but coyly omits to say which.  A little research reveals that it’s “Cheaters,” which was produced in New York in 1978, when Jacobs was only twenty-two—one of the youngest playwrights ever to have had a play on Broadway.  Despite featuring a well-known quartet of performers—Jack Weston, Lou Jacobi, Doris Roberts and Rosemary Murphy—it was a quick flop, running for little more than a month.  Now revised as “Maybe I Do,” it’s unlikely to have much more luck on screen, even with a cast that’s even starrier.

When “Cheaters” was written, the king of comedy on Broadway was Neil Simon, and Jacobs was obviously trying to mimic his style.  But his play, at least insofar as one can tell from the present offering, resembled Simon at his clumsiest.  The first part of the picture is some fifty minutes of set-up involving the six major characters.  First Howard (Richard Gere) and Monica (Susan Sarandon) are introduced sharing a bed in a ritzy hotel.  It’s revealed that both are married to others, and have been having an affair for four months.  Richard wants to break it off, which angers Monica, and when he walks out, she vows vengeance.

Elsewhere Sam (William H. Macy) is sobbing helplessly into a tub of popcorn while watching a pretentious foreign movie in a nearly empty arthouse theatre. Another patron, Grace (Diane Keaton), goes over to console him.  They go off to a crummy motel nearby and get a room, but merely talk, following that up with a walk around the city.  Then they go home to their spouses.  Unsurprisingly, sad-sack Sam’s wife is the waspish Monica, and kindly Grace’s husband is Richard. 

At a wedding reception, meanwhile, bridesmaid Michelle (Emma Roberts) is waiting to catch the bouquet.  Her live-in boyfriend Allen (Luke Bracey) jumps in to grab it instead.  When they get back to their apartment, they have a fight.  Michelle wants to get married, but commitment-phobic Allen wants to keep things as they are.  Michelle packs up and goes home to mother; Allen decides to visit his parents for advice.  It turns out that Michelle’s mom and dad are Grace and Howard, while Allen’s are Monica and Sam.  Holy coincidence, Batman!

Much advice ensues.  Monica is all for Allen moving on, Sam for him making up with Michelle; Grace tells her daughter to repair the relationship, while Richard urges caution.  Finally Diane suggests that they all get together for dinner—the youngsters and the parents who’ve never met, they all think. 

The dinner constitutes what was obviously the play’s second act.  While Michelle and Allen go upstairs to reach some big decisions, the four parents are left to sort matters out.  There is discussion of love, infidelity, forgiveness; there are recriminations and sappy explanations.  Monica is spiteful, Sam resigned, Grace hurt, Richard apologetic.  They talk about the pains of growing old and wondering about what might have been.  Will they break up?  Will the young couple make up?  The answers are all too obvious, and Jacobs does not disappoint by introducing any surprises; he has the formula down pat.

“Maybe I Do” offers an occasional decent quip, but is constructed like a six-part puzzle in which the pieces fit together way too easily, and even actors as skilled as these can’t milk many laughs from the tired jokes or much emotion from the serious speechifying.  Jacobs secures professional work not only from them but a few supporting players (DazMann Still as Luke’s friend, Michael Kostroff as the motel clerk, Adrienne Lovette as a waitress who commiserates with Howard—and the crew (production designer Rick Butler, cinematographer Tim Suhrstedt and editor Erica Freed Marker) as well.  It’s abundantly clear, however, that the short shelf life this material had on the New York stage was well deserved, though it might have played better in dinner theatres, where the standards were less demanding than on Broadway.               

So if the cast entices you into thinking about maybe watching “Maybe I Do,” don’t. 

THE OLD WAY

Producers: R. Bryan Wright, Micah Haley, Sasha Yelaun, Robert Paschall, Jr. and Brett Donowho   Director: Brett Donowho   Screenplay: Carl W. Lucas   Cast: Nicolas Cage, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Noah Le Gros, Clint Howard, Abraham Benrubi, Kerry Knuppe, Boyd Kestner, Adam Lazarre-White, Corby Griesenbeck, Everett Blunck, Nick Searcy and Shiloh Fernandez  Distributor: Saban Films

Grade: C-

All screenplays have bits and pieces reminiscent of other films, but in this case the writer, Carl W. Lucas, has engaged in something very close to adulation.  That “The Old Way”—a very appropriate title, given the circumstances—is a revenge western (twice over, no less) makes it part of a line of horse operas that has existed since the silent days.  But in particular it’s a mash-up of two modern near-classics, “Unforgiven” and “True Grit.”  And for good measure at the close Lucas throws in a nod to a third, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

Many of the actors are looking backward, too.  Nicolas Cage seems to be trying to channel Clint Eastwood.  Nick Searcy comes about as close to Ben Johnson as one can get without being charged with larceny.  And Clint Howard—well, it’s rather fun to see him do his imitation of Gabby Hayes.  Or is it supposed to be Strother Martin?

In any event, the story opens with a prologue in which Cage, as mean, invincible gunfighter Colton Briggs, shoots a bunch of people at a botched hanging before collecting his fee—and more—from one of the dead.  Among those left standing is young Jimmy McAllister (Everett Blunck), a scrawny, terrified kid who’s just watched Colton gun down his father and uncle (Corby Griesenbeck and Boyd Kestner) before putting the boy himself in his six-shooter’s sights and then riding off.

Twenty years later Briggs, his handlebar mustache gone, is a straight-laced, suited shopkeeper in a small town with a hard-working wife named Ruth (Kerry Knuppe) and an adolescent daughter named Brooke (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), whom he treats with stilted sternness.  He walks the girl to school one morning, leaving Ruth back at the homestead, and in their absence the house is invaded by the grown-up James (Noah Le Gros) and his crew of outlaws, which includes grizzled Howard, dapper Shiloh Fernandez and crusty Abraham Benrubi.  By the time Colton and Brooke return, their place has been occupied by Marshal Jarret (Searcy) and his posse, who are pursuing McAllister.  The lawman informs them that Ruth was murdered by James, an act of vengeance against the man who’d killed his father years before.

Now Colton takes up the gun he’d set aside for Ruth again to chase down McAllister and take his revenge, despite Jarret’s admonition to let the law handle the crime.  Ignoring that warning, Briggs mounts up to do the job himself, with Brooke at his side.  The two will bond over the course of the journey, which will wind up, after another meeting with Jarret, at a dusty town for a final game of cat-and-mouse and, of course, a showdown that takes some unexpected twists.

The picture looks fairly good, thanks to the Montana locations, Sion Michel’s widescreen cinematography, the spare but period-correct production design by Tessla Hastings, and Vicki Hales’s costumes.  And Andrew Morgan Smith’s score satisfactorily mimics the tropes of those in great Westerns of yore.

But the script is so shamelessly derivative that even the reasonably effective visuals make little impression, especially since the rhythms chosen by director Brett Donowho and editor Frederick Wardell are so solemn that the result often seems a series of stilted tableaux.  There are some action moments—Ruth’s brutalization, an ambush in a valley, the final shoot-out—but even they’re staged in ploddingly arty fashion.  One might get some modest satisfaction from watching the actors go through their paces, but the performances are terribly affected, with Cage monotonously monochromatic in super-restrained mode, Le Gross smiling malevolently as the sneering villain, and Searcy tiresomely avuncular as the world-weary marshal, delivering their monologues so slowly that the pauses between the phrases seem endless, as if the dialogue were a series of nuggets to be savored.  It isn’t.  Armstrong never rises above the amateurish, while the others barely cause a ripple—save for Howard, whose comic relief bits have a tinge of vaudeville about them.  Donowho permits himself a brief cameo as a cavalry officer, yet another director following Hitchcock’s example while falling leagues short of his mastery.

“The Old Way” may find favor with devotees of the B-movie westerns of the fifties.  But if you check them out on the GRIT Network, you’ll find that most are far more engaging than this enervating slog through Western clichés, which a somnolent Cage doesn’t even bother trying to energize.