Substituting chaos for excitement, political correctness for insight and plodding for dignity, this tale of Columbus's discovery is so dull that you'll wish Chris had taken his trip to Club Med and saved us all some trouble.
Depardieu, who makes every character he plays seem like a lumpy dimwit, never suggests Columbus's inspired imagination. His accent adds to the confusion too—a Frenchman, playing a man born in Italy and matured in Portugal, is speaking English that's supposed to be Spanish. He pronounces Asia as "Ah-ZEE-uh."
Director Ridley (Thelma & Louise) Scott and writer Roselyne Bosch humanize Columbus, emphasizing his love for his two sons, but they overdo it, at times raising the specter of a sitcom—Discoverer of the New World Knows Best. Depardieu even banters with Weaver, who makes Isabella seem coquettish. "You're the only queen I know," Depardieu tells her. "That's all right," Weaver replies. "I've never met a navigator before."
Assante (Q & A), as adviser to Isabella, is one of a bewildering array of supporting players. Once Columbus has reached the New World and the movie focuses on colonizing activities, confusion really sets in, with Indian and Spaniards of various descriptions milling about and bedeviling Depardieu.
Scott, though he depicts the Europeans brutalizing the indigenous Americans, also presents the Indians as savages who thrive on torture. But it's clear from the way Scott keeps showing them being mistreated in a number of ways that these are sympathetic savages. Scott lends a sense of moment to the actual discovery, yet the rest of the 152-minute film just drones along up to the death of Columbus. (PG-13)
Whoopi Goldberg, Leleti Khumalo
It would be difficult to conjure a more wrongheaded movie adaptation of a hit Broadway musical than this chronicle of black South African students struggling against apartheid. The one-set stage version of Sarafina! offered an exuberant score by South Africans Hugh Masekela and Mbongeni Ngema and an extraordinary young cast. Focusing on a charismatic teacher and a girl torn between dreams of stardom and idealistic emulation of Nelson Mandela, Broadway's Sarafina! traced the radicalization and martyrdom of the title character. Here, Goldberg is the rebellious teacher bent on inculcating self-respect, and Khumalo, reprising her stage role, is the eager acolyte.
Only talked about onstage, the brutality of the white soldiers, the horror of teenagers gunned down in a schoolyard (in slow motion) and the prison tortures are shown onscreen in graphic detail and, paradoxically, to less effect. And director Darrell James Roodt has appended a hockey Hollywood ending.
The music that gave the stage version of Sarafina! much of its drive has been injudiciously pared, leaving far too much room for such speeches as, "I'd rather die like him than live like you." The dances, shot from overhead, resemble nothing so much as semaphore drills. Goldberg isn't onscreen long enough to make the impact on her charges convincing, and Khumalo hasn't been given enough definition to carry the story. (PG-13)
Tom Selleck, ken Takakura, Aya Takanashi
The subject—American baseball players playing in Japan—is not a burning issue. The director, Fred Schepisi (The Russia House), is an Australian who doesn't understand baseball very well. The movie's undercurrent of Japan-bashing, and reciprocal America-bashing, is discomfiting. Yet this film manages to be quite warm, appealing and successful.
Selleck, such a fan that he wore a Detroit Tigers cap through all eight years of Magnum, P.I., is characteristically affable as a Yankee slugger whose talent has faded while his superstar ego remains at full flush. Then his agent signs him up with Nagoya's Chunichi Dragons. Selleck's baseball playing is respectable, though Schepisi so often shoots him from long-distance that it's tough to see him. Selleck is used better in the romantic subplot involving him with Takanashi as the daughter of the Dragons' imperious manager, Takakura.
Takakura effectively embodies the Japanese corporate mentality that makes a group effort of even such an individualized enterprise as playing baseball. (Selleck is discouraged from arguing with umpires and even from sliding hard to break up double plays, lest he "dishonor" his team.)
Dennis Haysbert derives earnest fun from his role as Selleck's only American teammate. Ex-major leaguers Leron Lee (who played in Japan as well as with the St. Louis Cardinals) and Greg Goossen appear in bit roles. Writers Gary Ross, Kevin Wade and Monte Merrick rely mostly on clichés—Selleck even denies that he is in a "srump"—and show little knowledge of baseball: In a light game, Selleck is supposed to bunt with the bases loaded, a ludicrously unlikely strategy for a home-run hitter. Everything predictably winds down toward a big game between the Dragons and the Tokyo Giants. Selleck and Takanashi's convention-defying romance gets sticky too, although the film's most interesting relationship is between Takakura and Selleck, epitomizing the clash between Japan's reverence for authority and America's affection for free spirits. (PG-13)
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak,
- Joanne Kaufman.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
