Hollywood must have been naughty this year, because Santa seemed to want nothing to do with several anxiously awaited films released in December. Among those who got Scrooged by audiences were Sydney Pollack's remake of the Audrey Hepburn-Humphrey Bogart classic Sabrina; the multi-directed Four Rooms, which included offerings from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez; and Oliver Stone's Nixon, which critics seem unable to speak of without using the word "controversial."
All of these films should have done well at the box office--Sabrina, with its high-powered director and stars Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond was to be the date movie of the season; Four Rooms was Tarantino's first movie project since Pulp Fiction; Nixon generated the requisite objections to revisionist and Stoned history, even including a Newsweek cover with a scowling picture of Anthony Hopkins as the self-crossed ex-president. And with the exception of Four Rooms, they received favorable reviews from a cynical press always wary of remakes--whether historical or artistic in nature.
Alas, none of them have done close to the amount of business they were expected to do. Despite the overwhelming amount of press generated by Stone's most recent foray into Virtual History, Nixon earned only $7.6 million in its first two weeks of release--chump change in Hollywood terms, especially for a top-flight director like Stone. Neither have audiences seemed to fall for Ormond's Sabrina like they did for Hepburn's, or for Ford's Linus Larrabee like they did for Bogart's. As of this past weekend, it has garnered only $38.2 million, still a far cry from its $70 million price tag. And Four Rooms? Well, the lackluster performance here is hardly surprising, given the overall quality (or lack thereof) of the production--a paltry $2.5 million in its first two weeks. It is nevertheless disappointing, however, since the insider buzz for the movie began almost immediately after the overwhelming success of Pulp Fiction in the fall of 1994.
So what's the problem? Why have audiences stayed home in droves when faced with films by some of the finest and most creative directors around today? Given the amount of free publicity that all of them enjoyed, it seems strange that they would fare so poorly at the box office, with not one of them coming close to breaking even (then again, remember Heaven's Gate and "Waterworld"?). In fact, this reviewer, for one, believes that despite their flaws (which range from the absurd to the asinine), they are all worth seeing. What follows is an attempt to save them from the "should have gone straight to video" muck in which they are currently wallowing.
Sabrina
The most impassioned complaints about this film came from the die-hard Audrey Hepburn fans, who felt that remaking an Audrey film made as much sense as tying a poodle to your butt and yelling "I am the dog! I am the dog!" Or something like that. At any rate, the naysayers have a good point: No one does Audrey like Audrey, and no one ever will. She was too beautiful, too graceful, too perfect to replace. Or recast.
Nevertheless, Julia Ormond comes damn close. She has the same easy, unself-conscious beauty that served Hepburn so well, and, like Audrey, has a smile that could melt even a Republican's heart. In Sabrina, she plays a chauffer's daughter who is in love with the youngest son of the Larrabee family, David (played remarkably well by an insouciant Greg Kinnear). David, however, hardly knows she exists, and spends his time chasing after and marrying other wealthier women.
All this changes, of course, when Sabrina returns from a two-year stint at French Vogue in Paris. Having gone away a shy, mousy girl, she returns a stunning woman who is finally aware of her own beauty but still afraid to embrace it. In fine romantic comedy form, David--who has recently become engaged to a beautiful pediatrician (played by Lauren Holly of "Picket Fences" and "Dumb and Dumber")--falls head over heels over head in love with Sabrina.
Enter Linus Larrabee, played by Harrison Ford. Linus, the cold-hearted head of the family company, doesn't want to see David ruin his engagement with the doctor, who just happens to be the daughter of the president of a huge corporation with which Larrabee Industries is planning a billion-dollar merger. Thus, in a plot to break up David and the chauffeur's daughter, Linus woos Sabrina himself, hoping that she will fall in love with him and forget about David.
When he has done this, he plans to trick Sabrina into going back to France alone by pretending that he will be on the plane with her and then failing to meet her there. Once Sabrina is in France and set up with a cozy bank account and other fine Parisian accoutrements, she will forget about the whole Larrabee family and stay in Paris to nurse her wounds, by which time David and the doctor will have married and the merger will have gone through.
Needless to say, however, the best-laid plans of mice, men and even billionaires often go awry, and not all goes according to plan. And therein lies the problem, and the movie.
What makes Sabrina so good is not its romantic themes, which are of fairly common but nonetheless endearing Hollywood stock. Rather, it's the sheer cleverness of the movie. At one point, the constantly truant David rushes out of Linus' office and tells his brother's secretary to meet him in his own office immediately. After taking a few more steps, he pauses, turns around, and asks with a look of genuine puzzlement on his face, "Where is my office?"
Granted, on paper this may not sound like high humor, but the actors in Sabrina deliver with such crisp timing that they make even bad jokes warmly funny. My advice: Go see Sabrina if a) you're on a date, or b) you like Rob Reiner movies (if you don't know what those might include, I can't help you). Although it may not have the irreplaceable Ms. Hepburn, pound for pound it is a better-written and funnier movie than the original.
Nixon
Ah, Oliver Stone. You either love him, hate him or think he did a little too much acid in the '60s. But you can't deny that the man has talent, even if only as the Bradley Smith of twentieth century American history.
In his most recent foray into the history books, he tackles the most controversial (there's that word again) president since John Quincy Adams (or something like that)--Tricky Dick himself. Starting with his close loss to Kennedy in the 1960 presidential race and flashing back periodically to his childhood in Whittier, California, Stone gives us a Nixon, played brilliantly by Anthony Hopkins, who is haunted and driven by his past and by an obsessive fear of failure.
Although many expected avowed bleeding-heart liberal Stone to portray the president as a borderline psychotic with an insatiable appetite for power, what comes across instead is a surprisingly sympathetic and human Nixon, with fears, doubts and concerns like everyone else.
The difference, Stone seems to say, is that Nixon's position was one that only fed his insecurities and made him doubt himself no matter how much he accomplished. Why else would such a brilliant and successful president engineer something as foolish as a half-ass break-in to the rival party's campaign headquarters? Could he honestly have doubted himself so much that he thought that a viable, even necessary step to take toward reelection? Stone seems to think so, and his interpretation, even at three hours and 20 minutes, is a masterpiece of dramatic tension and an intricate character study that makes for one hell of a film.
It is, however, only an interpretation--and a historically tenuous one at that. Stone creates fictional conversations between Nixon and his wife, Pat (played by Joan Allen, who deserves at least a nod for the Oscar), that have little or no foundation in historical fact. And, in an even more offensive and downright paranoid twist, he attempts oh-so-subtly to link Nixon both to the attempt on Castro's life and, even more incredibly, to the assassination of Kennedy. Not that he played a part in Kennedy's death, mind you, but "simply" that he was in on a conversation in which it was discussed.
As my grandpappy used to say: Uh-uh. It is events like these, which Stone likes to think of as simply "interpretations" of the amorphous nature of historical fact, that undercut the movie and allow people to dismiss in as historical tripe. Were he to avoid such chimera and stick at least to less offensive "reconstructions" as a meeting between John Dean and Gordon Liddy (which never happened) and a dramatic confrontation between Nixon and Pat in which she asks him not to run for president in 1968 (which also never happened), he might not alienate the myriad of people who stayed away precisely so they would not legitimize his more radical fantasies.
Stone is without a doubt a brilliant, if unorthodox, director, and if you don't mind playing fast and loose with history for the sake of an intricate, compelling drama, "Nixon" is definitely worth seeing.
Four Rooms
This was supposed to be a Big Movie Event. Miramax, which also brought us Pulp Fiction, had gathered together four of today's hottest young directors and asked them each to write and direct one short episode at a schmaltzy hotel on New Year's Eve. So Allison Anders (Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca), Alexandre Rockwell (In the Soup), Robert Rodriguez (El Mariachi, Desperado) and Quentin Tarantino (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction) penned an filmed their ersatz one-act plays and pieced them together with a Jerry Lewis-like bellhop named Ted, (over)played by Tim Roth.
The result? Almost two hours of self-indulgent cinematic masturbation, with one notable exception. But first, and briefly, the dregs.
It all begins with Anders' "The Missing Ingredient," in which a coven of witches who have gathered together to resurrect their "goddess," a 1950s "entertainer." Although Ione Skye, who was so good in Say Anything and Gas Food Lodging is the main character in this skit, her role is so poorly written--as is the entire piece itself--that she can do little with it.
To explain this one too much would be a waste of ink. Suffice it to say that three things immediately scream "B movie" when this one begins: 1. Madonna's in it. 2. Most of the witches get topless, for no apparent reason (surprisingly enough, Madonna is not one of them). 3. The whole plot revolves around Skye's attempt to get Ted the bellhop's sperm, which they need for the resurrection process. This makes for plenty of dick jokes and double entendres that seem to belong more to Benny Hill than to a talented director like Anders. This one is junk.
The second installment, Rockwell's "The Wrong Man", is no better. In fact, it's far worse, because at least dick jokes are funny half the time. Sadistic, paranoid fantasies, however, are not. Definitely the worst of the bunch.
The fourth installment, Tarantino's "The Man from Hollywood," is the second best of the lot, but, as my grandpappy used to say, that ain't sayin' much. The plot here is based on an old Alfred Hitchcock episode, "The Man from Rio," in which Peter Lorre bets Steve McQueen that McQueen can't light his favorite lighter ten times in a row. If he can, McQueen gets Lorre's car; if he can't, Lorre gets McQueen's little finger.
With Tarantino fetish for blood, you can bet how this one ends. The dialogue is only moderately clever, and Tarantino, in the starring role, does his usual Smurf-on-crack schtick. Neiether as interesting nor as intelligent as Tarantino's other work, this one will make die-hard fans rent "Reservoir Dogs" to remember why they liked him in the first place.
One side note: Does anyone else think that Tarantino started directing movies just to get an acting job? Why else would he cast himself in almost every movie he's had anything to do with? Arguably the real Misson that Ritalin was invented, Tarantino's freneticism, though endearing at first, wears thin after about five minutes of direct exposure. And the 30-plus minutes of this skit are way, way too much.
Not all is lost, however. Robert Rodriguez saves the day with his "The Misbehavers," which makes up for all of the other BLAH in the film and is probably singlehandedly responsible for keeping people from demanding refunds at the box office. In this installment, which is the best-acted, best-written and best-directed of them all, Rodriguez tells the tale of two kids left in a hotel room by their parents, the wonderfully campy and over-the-top Antonio Banderas and the talented but underappreciated Tamlyn Tomita.
Banderas' character, who is listed in the credits simply as "Man," persuades (or rather threatens and bribes) Ted to watch his kids while he and "Wife" go out on the town for New Year's. If anything happens to his children, Ted is dead, and the red will spread. And he knows it.
And so begins a brilliant, snappy comedy of errors that seems at times like Shakespeare on crystal meth. The kids, played by newcomers Lana McKissick and Danny Verduzco, are the highlight of the piece, and seeing them drink champagne, smoke cigarettes and watch soft porn on TV is priceless, and had everyone in my theater in hysterics.
To say more about this piece might give away the twist ending, so let me end with this: Four Rooms, for all its innumerable flaws (chief among them Roth's ridiculous homage to Jerry Lewis), is worth watching if for no other reason than to see the look on Banderas' face when he returns home at the end of the night, wife passed out in his arms, and surveys the havoc that has been wreaked on the room. This scene alone saves the movie from an otherwise dismal fate, and is so good that it makes you forget how bad the rest of it really is.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.