As I was watching Ishtar, something kept nagging at the back of my memory. I absorbed Hoffman and Beatty, their tired eyes, their hollow laughs, their palpable physical weariness as they marched through situations that were funny only by an act of faith. I kept thinking that I’d seen these performances elsewhere, that the physical exhaustion, the vacant eyes, and the sagging limbs added up to a familiar acting style.
Then I remembered. The movie was reminding me of the works of Robert Bresson, the great, austere French director who had a profound suspicion of actors. He felt they were always trying to slip their own energy, their own asides, their own “acting” into his movies. So he rehearsed them tirelessly, fifty or sixty times for every shot, until they were past all thought and caring. And then, when they were zombies with the strength to do only what he required, and nothing more, he was satisfied.
That’s what I got out of Beatty and Hoffman in Ishtar. There’s no hint of Hoffman’s wit and intelligence in Tootsie, no suggestion of Beatty’s grace and good humor in Heaven Can Wait, no chemistry between two actors who should be enjoying the opportunity to act together. No life.
I don’t know if Ishtar was clearly a disaster right from the first, but on the evidence of this film, I’d guess it quickly became a doomed project and that going to the set every morning was more like a sentence than an opportunity. It’s said this movie cost more than $40 million. At some point, maybe they should have spun off a million each for Hoffman and Beatty, supplied them with their own personal camera crews, and allowed them to use their spare time making documentaries about what they were going through.
Jack Frost
(Directed by Troy Miller; starring Michael Keaton, Joseph Cross, Kelly Preston; 1998)
Jack Frost is the kind of movie that makes you want to take the temperature, if not feel for the pulse, of the filmmakers. What possessed anyone to think this was a plausible idea for a movie? It’s a bad film, yes, but that’s not the real problem. Jack Frost could have been codirected by Orson Welles and Steven Spielberg and still be unwatchable, because of that damned snowman.
The snowman gave me the creeps. Never have I disliked a movie character more. They say state-of-the-art special effects can create the illusion of anything on the screen, and now we have proof: It’s possible for the Jim Henson folks and Industrial Light and Magic to put their heads together and come up with the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects, and I am not forgetting the Chucky doll or the desert intestine from Star Wars.
To see the snowman is to dislike the snowman. It doesn’t look like a snowman, anyway. It looks like a cheap snowman suit. When it moves, it doesn’t exactly glide—it walks, but without feet, like it’s creeping on its torso. It has anorexic tree limbs for arms, which spin through 360 degrees when it’s throwing snowballs. It has a big, wide mouth that moves as if masticating Gummi Bears. And it’s this kid’s dad.
Yes, little Charlie (Joseph Cross) has been without a father for a year, since his dad (Michael Keaton) was killed—on Christmas Day, of course. A year later, Charlie plays his father’s magic harmonica (“If you ever need me . . .”) and his father turns up as the snowman.
Think about that. It is an astounding fact. The snowman on Charlie’s front lawn is a living, moving creature inhabited by the personality of his father. It is a reflection of the lame-brained screenplay that despite having a sentient snowman, the movie casts about for plot fillers, including a school bully, a chase scene, snowball fights, a hockey team, an old family friend to talk to mom—you know, stuff to keep up the interest between those boring scenes when the snowman is talking.
What do you ask a snowman inhabited by your father? After all, dad’s been dead a year. What’s it like on the other side? Is there a heaven? Big Bang or steady state? When will the NBA strike end? Elvis—dead? What’s it like standing out on the lawn in the cold all night? Ever meet any angels? Has anybody else ever come back as a snowman? Do you have to eat? If you do, then what? Any good reporter could talk to that snowman for five minutes and come back with some great quotes.
But Charlie, self-centered little movie child, is more concerned with how Jack Frost (his father’s real name) can help him. His dad has been dead for a year and comes back as a snowman and all he can think of is using the snowman to defeat the school bully in a snowball fight. Also, the kid tries to keep dad from melting. (What kind of a half-track miracle is it if a snowman can talk, but it can’t keep from melting?) Does the snowman have any advice for his son? Here is a typical conversation:
Jack Frost: “You da man!”
Charlie: “No, you da man!”
Jack: “No, I da snowman!”
Eventually the snowman has to leave again—a fairly abrupt development announced with the cursory line, “It’s time for me to go . . . get on with your life.” By this time the snowman’s secret is known not only to his son but to his wife (Kelly Preston), who takes a phone call from her dead husband with what, under the circumstances, can only be described as extreme aplomb. At the end, the human Jack Frost materializes again, inside swirling fake snow, and tells his wife and son, “If you ever need me, I’m right here.” And Charlie doesn’t even ask, “What about on a hot day?”
The Jackal
(Directed by Michael Caton-Jones; starring Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, Sidney Poitier; 1997)
The Jackal is a glum, curiously flat thriller about a man who goes to a great deal of trouble in order to create a crime that anyone in the audience could commit more quickly and efficiently. An example: Can you think, faithful reader, of an easier way to sneak from Canada into the United States than by buying a sailboat and entering it in the Mackinaw-to-Chicago race? Surely there must be an entry point somewhere along the famous 3,000-mile border that would attract less attention than the finish line of a regatta.
To be sure, the Jackal (for it is he) has the money to buy the boat. He is charging $70 million to assassinate the head of the FBI—half now, half payable on completion. He’s hired by the head of the Russian Mafia, who, like many a foreigner with extra change in his pocket, doesn’t realize he is being overcharged. There are guys right here in town, so I have heard, who would do a whack for ten grand and be happy to have the business.
The Jackal is based on the screenplay of Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 classic The Day of the Jackal. That was a film that impressed us with the depth of its expertise: We felt it knew exactly what it was talking about. The Jackal, on the other hand, impressed me with its absurdity. There was scarcely a second I could take seriously.
Examples: In the Washington, D.C., subway system, the Jackal jumps across the tracks in front of a train, to elude his pursuers. The train stops, exchanges passengers, and pulls out of the station. Is it just possible, do you suppose, that in real life after a man jumps across the tracks, the train halts until the situation is sorted out?
Or, how about the scene where the Jackal parks his van in a garage, and paints the hatch handle with a deadly poison? One of his enemies touches the handle, convulses, and dies an agonizing death. Is that a good way to avoid attention? By being sure there’s a corpse on the ground next to your van?