Father Geek here with... OK, OK I hear you honking... I coming... Here's Capone folks...
Hey, Guys. Capone in Chicago here with what I believe is this site’s first look at the finished version of Jonathon Demme’s THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE, a remake of the delightful 1963 Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn romantic comedy/thriller CHARADE, directed by Stanley Donen.
We were fortunate to have Demme and one of the film’s stars, Thandie (yum-yum) Newton, on hand after the screening for a lively Q&A, but I’m afraid that was the only fortunate part of the evening.Before I dive into this review, a bit of personal history that even freaked me out a bit...
I saw THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE on September 29, four years to the day from when I submitted my first pathetic review for this fine web site. Shockingly enough, the film I reviewed was the first public screening of Demme’s last feature, BELOVED, which I loved. Several months later, when Harry issued his Worst Films of 1998 list, he put BELOVED at the tippy top, and I knew I’d found my cinematic soul mate.
Now that I’ve finished my trip down memory lane, I’ll make the statement that THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE may be Demme’s worst film ever but not for lack of trying. I told Demme during the post-film discussion that my favorite works of his have been the smaller-scale ones, especially his performance works with Spalding Gray, Talking Heads, Robyn Hitchcock, and his wonderful documentary, COUSIN BOBBY. Yes, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and PHILADELPHIA featured some great acting and garnered Demme and his co-workers some much-deserved Oscars, but it’s more difficult to make a great film when the setting doesn’t change and there are few who match Demme when it comes to this type of filmmaking.
Lately, Demme has been spacing his big-budget works four or five years apart (with a small-scale gem usually bridging these gaps), so you feel like maybe the guy would take the time to develop a mess of a script like CHARLIE into something watchable. And you can’t talk about CHARLIE without talking about CHARADE.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen CHARADE, but I remember a few things about it. First, I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the opening credits and mistakingly thought the whole time I was watching it that it was a Hitchcock film. I’m guessing I’m not the first person to make this mistake. Second, I remember the actual story of CHARADE didn’t matter that much. It was simply an excuse to get these two wonderful actors together to trade witticisms. The movie was about banter and Cary Grant remains to this date the undisputed King of Witty Banter. Audrey Hepburn was no slouch in this realm either, and the two playing magnificently off each other. Actually when I heard that Thandie Newton was filling Audrey’s shoes, I was pleased. She had displayed some comic talent in films like FLIRTING, LOADED (from New Zealand), and THE LEADING MAN, but this would be a chance for her to shine in a leading role in a big budge film from a proven director. And she’s exactly the right kind of beautiful for the role. Guess what folks, there’s no banter in the whole film. Jonathon Demme might disagree with me on this, but all traces of wit have been scrubbed in favor of a lame story that no one will be able to decipher, assuming anyone would want to bother.And don’t even get me started on Mark Wahlberg, who has the impossible and unenviable task of filling Cary Grant’s shoes. About the only thing these two have in common is that they both fill out a suit nicely. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Wahlberg fan. He’s not a great actor, but in the hands of certain great directors, he’s done fantastic work. As much as BOOGIE NIGHTS was an ensemble piece, Wahlberg stood at the center of that story and held his own. But here, he is just out of his element, and we discover quickly that Wahlberg does not yet have the resources to pull off playing the romantic leading man.
The coolest thing about CHARADE was that Hepburn was so hot for Grant, she didn’t care if he was out to get her or not. In CHARLIE, Newton finds Wahlberg attractive but the chemistry is not volatile.
The story of THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE is largely the same as CHARADE. Things open with the death of Charlie (Stephen Dillane) on a train at the hands of an unseen killer. Charlie’s wife is on a tropical vacation with a girlfriend when she runs into Joshua (Wahlberg), who is in full “cute guy” mode. The two “run into” each other at the Paris airport a day later. Her husband has not come to pick her up (she doesn’t know he’s dead yet), and Joshua just happens to be going in her direction, so the two share a cab. We learn that Regina was planning on asking Charlie for a divorce, despite the fact that they’ve only been married for three months. (One of the film’s many unanswered questions is What the hell did Charlie do to warrant a divorce after only three months?) Upon returning to her oversized Paris flat, Regina finds the place emptied of all valuables, ransacked, and occupied by Paris police. The cops inform Regina that her husband hand a half-dozen fake passports in his luggage as well as various currencies from all over the world, and she quickly realizes she didn’t know her husband at all.After allegedly finding out about her dead husband on the local news, Joshua shows up at Regina’s doorstep offering to set her up in his hotel (separate rooms, of course; he is a gentleman after all). But it doesn’t take long for all sorts of craziness to happen and for the movie’s slow descent into crapitude to begin. We see Joshua start snooping through Charlie’s personal effects while Regina is out of the room. A trio of unsightly paramilitary types (LAMB’s Ted Levine, “The Practice’s” Lisa Gay Hamilton, and Korean superstar Joong-Hoon Park from the awesome NOWHERE TO HIDE) start popping up everywhere in Regina’s life. A batty old woman claiming to be Charlie’s’ mother shows up blaming Regina for her son’s death and trying to kill her. And Tim Robbins arrives as Mr. Bartholomew, the supposed voice of reason U.S. government agent, who says he worked with Charlie and the paramilitaries in a special mission that resulting in millions in missing diamonds. Although Regina may be fooled by some of these characters, the audience is never given the chance to, thus all the drama needed to sustain this who-did-what-to-whom story is thrown out the window. As an audience, we don’t trust anybody who flashes credentials and says they are on Regina’s side. In fact, we assume they are all out to get her or the diamonds, so we just drift away from caring and await the film’s end. Every double- and triple-cross is met with a shrug by the viewer.
On top of the way-too-complicated-for-its-own-good story, Demme uses THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE as his means to honor French films in general with subtle and not-so-subtle tributes. The only one that I thought was well done is during a seduction scene in Regina’s room when Joshua plays her a Charles Aznavour (SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER) record to get the mood going. Suddenly the real Aznavour shows up in the room singing the song. It’s a great moment, the impact of which is totally cheapened by a second Aznavour appearance at the end of the film. Now, he’s just an annoying old guy who won’t go away. But this and other cameos aren’t what ruins CHARLIE. Forget that Demme’s extremely in-jokes about French cinema will be lost of 99 percent of most audiences. The non-sensical nature of the plot will piss people off so much before the in-jokes even get going. There are about 100 different points in the story where Regina could have done something smart and had most of the lies revealed. Instead, she acts dumb pretty much from beginning to end.
Because CHARADE was most clearly a comedy with a bit of intrigue thrown in to keep the story moving, we could accept silly behavior. In CHARLIE, the emphasis is on an exciting story, throwing character development to the wind, leaving us with nothing but a hollow shell of a film.Other bothersome scenes involved Regina’s interaction with people who appear to be out to harm her. In one scene, she’ll be running for her life; in the next, she’s in a dance hall doing the friggin’ tango with some of the very people who were chasing her. Huh?! I’m certain Regina would have been smart enough to simply leave Paris and let her pursuers seek out the diamonds somewhere other than in her pockets. That’s what I’m saying: there’s no sense or logic to THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE.
If a knife was put to my throat and I was forced to say one nice thing about this movie, it would be that the electric music choices were really great. So great, in fact, that I was tempted to shut my eyes, lean my head back, and just listen to the tunes. Demme explained after the film that Paris was a focal point for every type of music and that his team spent weeks collecting and screening possible music choices for the film. I’m fairly certain that none of the songs were created for CHARLIE but that’s fine; it’s like a great mix tape from a dozen different countries. But whereas a change of tempo, mood, and style works well on a mix tape, it bombs when compiling a film.
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE is a jumbled, pointless mess from a group of actors and filmmakers who should have known better.
