Hey folks, Harry here with the genius that is Copernicus and his crazed fun-filled ranting about Ebert and WHEN WILL I BE LOVED. Surely that's not his real cell phone. He's not that crazy...
My cell number while I am at the Toronto Film Festival is 416-871-5031. I give that out because Roger Ebert must have been given a blow job in return for his review of "When Will I Be Loved," and I want to get in on that gravy train. I have no evidence that there was any quid pro ho, but it is the only way I can reconcile my respect for Roger Ebert as a film critic and his endorsement of the wretchedly disappointing feature by James Toback. I am a rank amateur film critic compared to Roger Ebert, and I am positive he is better than me at pointing out the nuances that make good films great. But any fool can spot a turd, and I feel it is my obligation to call this one out.
When I first heard that Ebert had mentioned the words "Oscar" and "When Will I Be Loved" in the same review at first I was in denial. Then when I read it for myself I briefly considered that some kind of quantum-mechanical alternate universe thing had happened, where somehow reality had branched and we had seen different movies. Or maybe he was abducted by space aliens and some kind of myopic simulacrum was put here in his place. That's when I came up with the Clintonian scenario. But I am not going to rule out nudity-induced mesmerization (I was nearly hypnotized myself).
The plot, and I use that term loosely, goes like this: Neve Campbell takes a shower, has sex with a woman, has sex with a man, then on the advice of her hustler boyfriend agrees to meet Count Tommaso (Dominic Chianese) for $100,000. Ooh, but she's (a little) more to her character than we are first led to believe, blah, blah, blah. You have to sit through about an hour of some of the most rambling, unfocused, clearly improvised scenes that go absolutely nowhere before you are even get even the tiniest nugget of an interesting conflict in the movie.
Ahh there is a nugget, and that is what makes this film depressing -- the squandered potential. Neve Campbell has a scene where she is making out with another woman. Great idea -- this should be the highlight of any movie! But they are shot with the two women behind a curtain! Good execution Tob-hack! Stupefying. Neve Campbell has sex with a man without ever taking off her clothes. This can be done properly, but here it just looks silly. I could understand if it is in her contract, but she already had a nude shower scene at the beginning of the movie for no apparent reason! If you are going to make a movie exploiting the fact that Neve Campbell's career is in the toilet, and those kinds of movies have a fine place in cinema history, then please, please, at least do it right! If that's not the movie you are going for, then that's great too, but then at least half-serious about your movie.
To be fair, I did miss part of a scene when I was in the bathroom vomiting over how amateurish the movie was. Stupidly, I came back for more because I had the tiniest glimmer of hope. But I still couldn't take the excruciating agony of interminable, horribly improvised scenes. In particular, every second that the director himself is on-screen as the African-American studies professor Hassan al-Ibrahim ben Rabinowitz, I had on the Hiroshima stare. I kept wanting to yell "Cut! Please, please, for the love of god, cut, and save what scraps of dignity you people still have."
Eventually I couldn't take it anymore and walked out because I would rather just wait around outside for the next screening than subject my brain to that agony any longer. So consider this a review of the first 2/3 of the movie. I will allow for the possibility that some kind of miracle happens and the movie is 10 times better than Citizen Kane in the last act, thereby averaging out to watchable. But don't count on it -- even Neve Campbell herself said that they had only 30 pages of script and improvised the rest. That shows you the amount of thought and preparation that went into this masterpiece. And rather than give the movie a ringing endorsement she used the classic dodge, "I had so much fun making this movie."
To be fair to Ebert, he didn't necessarily say the film overall was great, he just said that Neve Campbell deserved an Oscar for her performance. The scene he mentions between her and Dominic Chianese is indeed a good one, but nowhere near Oscar-worthy. It was more like opening an umbrella in the middle of a full-on shitstorm hurricane. She and Dominic Chinese do everything they can to make the movie work. It is a pity that they weren't surrounded by more talent, and weren't working with a decent director. The one bright spot is that I do get the sense that she is capable of much more than we have seen in the past from her, and I suspect that that is what Ebert was locking onto here.
Normally I wouldn't write so negative a review for an independent movie. And if it were a first time director I wouldn't. But Toback should know better. And if I can just persuade a handful people not to see this disaster, then there will be that many fewer people in the mob when they come after Ebert for suggesting they spend money on this flagrant display of mediocrity.
Copernicus
