Producers: Jim Parsons, Todd Spiewak, Allison Mo Massey, Michael Showalter and Jordana Mollick   Director: Michael Showalter    Screenplay: David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage   Cast: Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge, Nikki M. James, Sally Field, Bill Irwin, Jeffery Self, Antoni Porowski, David Marshall Grant, Josh Pais, Brody Caines, Tara Summers, Sadie Scott and Shunori Ramanathan   Distributor: Focus Features

Grade: C

Emulating Alfred Hitchcock’s self-professed habit of returning to the tried and true when one of his films failed to connect with the audience, Michael Showalter, after the disappointing reception of both the criminally undervalued “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” and “The Lovebirds,” revisits the genre that brought him his greatest success—the rom-com weepie.  But this adaptation of Michael Ausiello’s 2017 memoir (whose subtitle “The Hero Dies” it jettisons) about his relationship with photographer Kit Cowan fails to recapture the spark of Showalter’s previous exercise in tragic-end romance, 2017’s “The Big Sick,” though in that case the tragedy was ultimately avoided.

In this instance the couple is gay.  Jim Parsons stars as Ausiello, who as a staff writer for TV Guide met handsome Cowan (Ben Aldridge) in a bar in 2001.  The two instantly clicked despite their different personalities, and eventually moved in together.  There were rough patches that required couples counseling, and they eventually separated amicably, but when Cowan was diagnosed with neuroendocrine cancer, Ausiello became his primary support and caregiver until his death. 

That, in a nutshell, is the film’s plot. But as directed by Showalter and edited by Peter Teschner, it’s played out in a fashion that never seems real in either its initial coupling section or its ultimate melancholy one, although the story itself is.  Despite game efforts from Parsons and Aldridge, the movie doesn’t convince us of the instant attraction between Michael, the Smurf-collecting uptight nebbish whose frame of reference comes almost entirely from watching television, and hunky Kit, a well-muscled promiscuous guy who’s nonetheless still in the closet insofar as his parents Marilyn and Bob (Sally Field and Bill Irwin) are concerned.  Nor does it chart the development and deterioration of their relationship with particular insight, preferring instead to tick off a montage of “over the years” Christmas cards that are meant to suffice apart from a tiff over Michael’s suspicion that Kit is cheating on him with office mate Sebastian (Antoni Porowski)—a thread reintroduced awkwardly in the last reel—along with a montage of their animated complaints to a therapist (David Marshall Grant).  And when the film reaches the final act involving Kit’s succumbing to a sudden onset of terminal, fast-spreading cancer, it fails to achieve the emotional force it’s striving for, opting instead to wrench us from the dying man’s final breath to an ill-conceived imaginary sequence that falls flat.

The weaknesses are exacerbated by dialogue that never rings true, generally clunky and surprisingly flat when it tries for quippy humor.  And though Michael, who begins the story with narration, assures us that he’s going to stop talking, he never does, yammering on through the close; you might think of the film as an illustrated audiobook.  This is one instance when a technique that’s generally deplorable—pulling away from a conversation so that we observe it silently from afar rather than hearing the words, as in the scene where Kit finally tells his parents of his condition—is actually welcome.

Even more damaging is a misguided device that periodically interrupts the action explaining Michael’s special horror over Kit’s condition by portraying the loss of his mother to cancer in the form of scenes from a bad eighties sitcom in which, as a self-described FFK (Former Fat Kid) played by Brody Caines, he witnesses his mom (Tara Summers) learning of her diagnosis.  The interjections would be disruptive under any circumstances, but they’re also so poorly done as to be embarrassing.

Neither does the film use its cast to best advantage.  Parsons brings the skills honed on network sitcoms considerably better than the fabricated one included here to the mix, but his dramatic impulses feel false, especially since Showalter exhibits a penchant for oppressive close-ups, and while Aldridge fills the physical dimensions of his role, he proves overmatched by the demands of his later scenes.  Even Field and Irwin fare poorly.  She’s forced into exaggeration as a woman who, in her seventies, is still devoted to participating in triathlons; Irwin fares better as her halting, complaining, nervously halting spouse.  A few others have moments: Sadie Scott as Kit’s amusingly laconic roommate, Jeffrey Self as Michael’s extrovert friend Nick, and Nikki M. James as their mutual pal Nina.  Visually the film has a TV sitcom look—Sara K. White’s production design and Claire Parkinson’s costumes are unremarkable, as is Brian Burgoyne’s cinematography, though matters spark somewhat in outdoor sequences at Ocean Beach.  Brian H. Kim’s score falls back on rather predictable effects.              

“Spoiler Alert” tells a story that, while formulaic, can’t help but be touching.  But while it may succeed in wringing a few tears from you, in retrospect you probably won’t feel they’ve been earned.

Producers: Molly Smith, Rachel Smith, Thad Luckinbill and Trent Luckinbill   Director: J.D. Dillard   Screenplay: Jake Crane and Jonathan A.H. Stewart   Cast: Jonathan Majors, Glen Powell, Christina Jackson, Thomas Sadoski, Joe Jonas, Daren Kagasoff, Nick Hargrove, Spencer Neville, Joseph Cross, Sean Kelley and Serinda Swan     Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures

Grade: C

Calling “Devotion” hokey would give hokiness a bad name; based on a 2015 book by Adam Makos, it’s a wartime drama set in 1950 that might have been made then.  The script is loaded with clichéd scenes and corny dialogue; the direction is pedestrian; and most of the performances are bland.  Even the action sequences—mostly of aerial training and combat—lack the excitement they’re intended to engender.  The result is a film that’s epic in its ambition (and length) but curiously muted and hackneyed in execution.

But there is one major element that stands out: its focus on Jesse L. Brown, the first black pilot in the U.S. Navy.  That biographical element gives “Devotion,” however unremarkable it might be overall, an inspirational component that can’t help but carry an emotional pull, especially since Brown is played by Jonathan Majors with great authority and dignity.

The film does not cover Brown’s career in full, alluding to his struggle to rise from an impoverished background to acceptance as a naval aviator only through later periodic references.  The actual narrative is confined to 1950, with him already an ensign in a naval squadron on the USS Carrier Leyte.  He’s introduced when Lt. Tom Hudner (Glen Powell) arrives on board to join the squadron, becoming his wingman.  Only gradually are his relationships with the other members of the squad—pilots Marty Goode (Joe Jonas), Bill Koenig (Daren Kagasoff), Carol Mohring (Nick Hargrove) and Bo Lavery (Spencer Neville), along with their executive officer Dick Cevoli (Thomas Sadoski)—as well as his loving marriage to Daisy (Christina Jackson), made clear, as are the tense, hostile feelings of some of the servicemen on the carrier about his presence.

The film’s concentration is, however, on the development of the friendship between Brown and Hudner as they’re introduced to a new plane, the Corsair, which they must master.  Then they’re ordered to the Mediterranean to prepare for possible retaliation against Russian provocations, during which deployment they meet Elizabeth Taylor (Serinda Swan) during shore leave on the French Riviera—a sequence that’s highly embellished here, the actual meeting having been far less elaborate.

The sojourn in the Mediterranean is abruptly ended when the Leyte is ordered to the Korean peninsula, where troops from the communist north have invaded the south and the U.S. has become involved in the conflict.  Three squadron operations during the fall and winter are depicted at length: a sortie to bomb two bridges that would allow Chinese forces to enter Korea in force; a mission to soften Chinese resistance to a Marine advance; and an attempt to rescue Brown, trapped in the wreckage of his Corsair when he was forced to crash-land behind enemy lines after being struck by antiaircraft fire.  In the first Brown is portrayed as instrumental in rendering the bridges impassable, and in the latter Hudner and his comrades risk their own lives in a futile effort to save Brown or, when that becomes impossible, retrieve his body.

As in virtually all such war films based on actual events, changes are made for dramatic effect.  The episode with Elizabeth Taylor is a major example, but there are further liberties taken, both large and small.  Even when the script sticks quite closely to the facts, however, the execution is often flawed.  When Mohring crashes into the sea trying to negotiate a test landing on the Leyte, for instance, the staging and editing (by Billy Fox) are so lackadaisical that one is left wondering whether the disaster was intentional: the pilot is repeatedly shown nonchalantly gazing around his field of vision while persistently ignoring instructions to rectify his approach.  And while the combat scenes in Korea are adequately managed by the effects team, they fail to set the pulse racing, despite the best efforts of Fox and cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt.  (It must be said, though, that the latter’s surname is certainly appropriate in a film about aircraft.)  Similarly, while Wynn Thomas’ production design and Deirdra Elizabeth Govan’s costumes are in period style, as in so many pictures they lack the lived-in look that would be fully convincing.  Chandra Dancy’s music unimaginatively employs the usual tropes in the scores of such tales—no soaring Jerry Goldsmith “Blue Max”-style exhilaration here—and some pop songs are interpolated to generate an early fifties feel.

Worst of all, apart from Majors the cast is lackluster, with Powell’s soporific turn particularly deadening.  Those playing the other members of the squadron try to invigorate things, but like even Majors and Jackson they’re hobbled by dialogue that sounds as though it’s been lifted from a mediocre 1940s World War II picture, and by J.D. Dillard’s sluggish direction.  It’s a far cry from the energy, and insight, that Robert Altman brought to the Korean conflict in “M*A*S*H.”

“Devotion” is an earnest effort to celebrate the heroism and tragedy that marked the life of Ensign Jesse Brown.  But he deserves more than earnestness, and this film doesn’t deliver it.