“I can’t shake no more …”

It’s unfortunate that a movie like this encountered such difficulty in being released, because it results in the awkward situation of people “excited” to “finally” see something that really those words should never be associated with. This unfortunacy I’ve been pondering for months now while waiting. What’s more unfortunate, however, is that in the last couple of months I’d pretty much finally heard enough to know this wasn’t anything to get excited about anyway. As I wrote in my review of The Secret Life of Bees, I’ve pretty much decided that Elle is the far more talented of the Fanning sisters. And though I’d read plenty of reviews way back on its first limited showing that it was a waste of time (though Jodie Foster’s praise of Fanning’s performance was encouraging), it was the comments from people whose opinion I more fully believed would match my own lately that kind of made me give up the anticipation.

What to say but that to begin with, at least, it is even worse than all that preamble suggests … it’s seriously wobblier than Elvis’ knees. The lack of any kind of direction in the first half hour leads me to believe that the film makers fully intended audiences to come to it as “the Dakota Fanning rape movie” and therefore sit through any duration to get to that key scene, which is just … I don’t even need to say how blank that is. Aside from a laugh-out-loud lightning incident that made me start to wonder, “wait, is this a comedy now?”, literally nothing happens until the rape. Following that scene, it must be said that the movie admirably approximates the tone and theme of Terry Gilliam’s Tideland – that a surprising amount of strength and forward momentum can come from the worst mankind is capable of, especially where children are concerned – but I’m quick to point out it never comes even close to that movie.

As to Fanning … the problem is, if this role was a challenge for her it wasn’t because of any of the sexual content. It’s because she’s portraying what amounts at best to a regular kid, at worst a simpleton, for the first time in her career – whether she succeeds or not is moot, because anybody who’s followed her work so far simply won’t believe it, because all her main roles to date have been played off her precocity. To go back to Tideland, there was something about Jodelle Ferland that worked for the similar character Jeliza Rose – she has precocity and even burgeoning sexuality like Fanning, but there’s more of a sense that she’s less aware of it or something. I won’t deny that Fanning has her moments here, most particularly her longer singing scene following the rape – something that begins looking slightly ridiculous turns into something that almost makes the movie into something worthwhile. But it’s really got nothing on her past performances.

Anyway, the short version is, it wasn’t worth waiting for. Lay the absolutely awful twangly score on the top of all this and you almost have just about the worst movie I’ve looked forward to seeing in a long time, to be honest. Maybe if it weren’t for Tideland and the wait I’d be more lenient … but what can you do?

Tags: cuties, Dakota, Elvis, music, rape

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 7:57 pm and is filed under 2 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.