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Friday, May 1, 1998

Screenscene

"He Got Game"

Directed by Spike Lee

Starring Denzel Washington

In spring time - while flowers bloom and young men's fancies turn to love - high school seniors have to decide what college to attend. Remember when you were a senior in high school, facing the biggest decision of your young life? Remember all of the pressure you faced? Wasn't that a tough decision?

Try, then, to fathom the pressure faced by Jesus Shuttlesworth, the protagonist of Lee's latest film, "He Got Game." It is time for Jesus (played by real-life Milwaukee Buck Ray Allen) to pick a school, and as a standout high school basketball player, the decision is even more stress-filled. And as the best player ever to walk the face of the earth, well, it's just wild.

And that's not even the half of it for Jesus, who is indeed the best ever (we see his picture on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and a piece on him in SportsCenter with quotes from Shaquille O'Neal and Dick Vitale). Just six days before decision-time, Jesus' dad Jake (Washington) gets out of jail. Now Jesus has to decide whether to forgive his father, who murdered Jesus' mother six years before. And Jesus still has to decide where to go to school. Jesus!

Meanwhile, director Lee never decides what elements of this to focus on. Sometimes, this is a movie about the beauty of basketball, with lots of close-up, slow-motion shots of jumpers sailing toward the basket. Sometimes, it attempts to be a movie about Jake - the murderer who turns out to be the nicest guy in the picture, as everyone else eyes Jesus' money. And Lee stretches the plot still further in giving both Jesus and Jake love interests.

But these all amount to distractions in what ultimately is a movie about the stresses faced by 18-year-old prospects, like Jesus. All of his acquaintances want a piece of his future earnings. He is bribed, begged to and seduced by agents, coaches and women. One coach even holds his hand to pray, "Dear Lord. Please deliver Jesus to us."

You'd think Jesus would have a nervous breakdown, but the solution to his problems lies elsewhere. After all, this, among other things, is a basketball movie, and eventually, Jesus and his dad have to play some one-on-one.

Mark Dittmer

Grade: C

"Les Miserables"

Directed by Bille August

Starring Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman and Claire Danes

It was bound to happen. Full of drama, romance and epic settings, Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" was bound to be made into a major motion picture. And in trying to fit a thousand plus pages into a little over two hours, Bille August's film adaptation isn't exactly a carbon copy of the musical-theater inspiring work. It's more like a two-year-old's sketch of the Mona Lisa.

In this latest film version of Hugo's literary classic, an onslaught of big name actors give generally decent performances. But there are enough little character and plot changes to transform a potential epic human drama into a feel-good Hollywood movie.

The first half of the film is actually quite accurate, as the audience witnesses Jean Valjean's (Neeson) transformation from convict to mayor. In fact, the film devotes quite a large portion of the film to the first couple hundred pages of the novel, carefully setting up the conflict between Valjean and Javert (Rush), the meticulous policeman who is obsessed in capturing Valjean.

As the movie progresses though, things become more and more detached from original story. The memorable gems in the book are lost to snappier, laughter-inducing scenes. Valjean and "daughter" Cosette's touching initial encounter in the dark is lost. The tragedy of the sympathetic and wretched Eponine is not to be found and neither is Marius' lengthy quiet and subtle courtship of Cosette.

But absences aside, the changes are more disturbing. Dane's feisty and somewhat annoying portrayal of the older Cosette lacks the silent delicate grace needed. And instead of revealing his identity and Cosette's history on his death bed, Valjean is forced to tell all in a overly dramatic yet surprisingly anticlimatic scene, culminating in Cosette yelling, "Who are you?"

Yet, close comparison and scrutiny aside, the film is entirely watchable. Strong performances and an inherently interesting plot make for an entertaining experience.

The brightest one of the stars though is certainly Rush. While the film itself pushes Rush toward a stereotypical two-dimensional performance, the Academy Award-winning actor manages to convey a certain amount of depth in the role of the misunderstood antagonist.

But this is Hollywood, so they won't wade deeper. Besides, no one has the balls to kill Neeson. So instead adaptations are made. Javert's somewhat weak and tragic escape through suicide is molded into a somewhat heroic and respectable act, in an everything-is-nicely-tied-up kind of scene where he releases Valjean. And so as the music swells, the wind billows through Neeson's hair, his coat flutters, the doves fly overhead, the audience is sitting amidst the popcorn smiling. Feeling good about mankind, feeling good about themselves and feeling a little ... oh ... fuzzy.

Stephanie Sheh

Grade: B-

"Dancer, Texas Pop. 81"

Directed by Tim McCanlies

Starring Breckin Meyer, Peter Facinelli, Ethan Embry and Eddie Mills

A title which contains important information is a good start, but its even better that among the 81 we find a group of good young actors - Meyer, Facinelli, Mills and especially Embry, who's always a charmer with his signature dorkiness ("Empire Records," "That Thing You Do").

They play four best friends and since childhood they've made a pack to leave their small town of Dancer and shoot for Los Angeles once they graduate from high school. But when that time comes, three of them back out, leaving poor Keller (Meyer) the only dancer without a partner.

But Keller just has to leave, and so the movie's drippy score begins to play, always on cue, further embarrassing those already mawkish blatherings about growing up and tackling the big world.

In many ways "Dancer" is refreshing, a modest and honest do-gooder in a filmmaking era of pretentious bullies. Yes, it's a marvel that this type of movie can still be made these days, a movie so audacious with its dramatic pablum- - there's a certain feel of cultural vengeance to the film's unmitigating sentimentality - as if the filmmakers purposely wanted to shock and molest our jaded '90s sensibility with their story's golly-gee wholesomeness. It's an interesting intention of the filmmakers which makes for an interesting indictment against our movie-going generation, but that discussion is perhaps better left for post-postmodern scholars to consider.

For our needs, "Dancer" works best if we render it to the same vacuum of a Countrytime lemonade commercial: girls on swings, wild mustangs, rustic horizons, hunky-dory Newton Boys lit by campfire. Apparently, it's also a vacuum where parents with resources never consider sending their sons to college, where hip and accessible cities like Austin or San Antonio are never mentioned as compromises and, get this, where we're supposed to sympathize with a dying oil drilling industry.

Whether or not it's autobiographical (though writer-director McCanlies is a fifth generation Texan now living in Los Angeles), "Dancer" is still a kind of movie that only an autobiographer could fully love: a therapeutic and sometimes shamelessly indulgent memoir to himself, complete with the idle pace of goo-goo-eyed reminiscing. But surely others will be able to embrace it as well, mostly because of the four talented and incidentally photogenic stars (thank heaven for little girls).

Tommy Nguyen

Grade:B

Denzel Washington (left) plays Jake who tries to convince his estranged son Jesus (Ray Allen) to accept a basketball scholarship.

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