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Welcome to Collinwood
I hope you liked our best of 2001 issue. The Oscar nominations were a mixed bag. I'm impressed and happy for Lord of The Rings' thirteen nominations. However, I was extremely dissapointed that Baz Lurhmann didn't get nominated. The best surprise was Nicole's Moulin Rouge nomination. I hope she wins... I promised a script review of I.D. but it will have to wait a few more days. Today, we have Hollyfeld's review of Welcome to Collinwood. He will also review the script to 8mile next week. Have a nice weekend!
Review of Welcome to Collinwood
"Hollyfeld, here.
Last night I caught a screening of Welcome to Collinwood, the new light comedy from producers George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, writer/directors Anthony and Joe Russo, and starring William H. Macy, Sam Rockwell, Michael Jeter, and a host of others (including an extended cameo by George Clooney). Lately these screenings have been placing an added emphasis that they do not wish people to write reviews on the internet, because they claim that all these people badmouth films that are not finished. But I liked this film, and all my criticisms with it are both constructive and cautious, since they could all be fixed by the time the film is released.
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| Photos courtesy of Upcoming Movies |
And if you don't think everything is going to go wrong, you're reading the wrong website.
In many respects, Welcome to Collinwood is the typical heist film - a good plan goes awry through unfortunate circumstance and clashing personalities. The Score, Reservoir Dogs, Dog Day Afternoon, et al have all followed the formula to great success. Unlike those other films, however, Welcome to Collinwood plays the formula for laughs. True, this has been done before, but unlike in Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks, for example, the film remains soundly focused on the heist itself. While this is certainly an ensemble piece, all the characters revolve around the Bellini - this is not the kind of thing they do every day, but a golden opportunity that has miraculously fallen into their laps. All of them, on some level, are losers who see this as their one chance to make their lives better. They may be right, and they may be wrong - there might just be something else for each of them that could make them happier people.
The importance of this job to the characters contributes a sense of importance to the film, which is a good thing because it is very leisurely paced. There is a pleasant, laid back quality to the filmmaking, and it seems the directors did not want to rush their film, preferring instead to let the actors act and enjoy their scenes rather than rushing to some stereotypical action-packed climax. Often (very often, in fact) the slower scenes come with lively, 1940s-esque music, which can be nice and suits the mood of the film, but seems a little pervasive. Perhaps if they use it a little less often it would have an even more positive impact. (Of course, this could very easily have been a temp score, so I make my critique cautiously.)
For the most part, however, the film's tempo is fine - the film is not a madcap caper, but a droll, innocent comedy about born losers, and it works just fine that way. Occasionally it seems that the film could be moving along more quickly, but at times as well we wish it would linger a bit more on certain scenes. There are a few moments in which characters describe something that happened off-screen that, dang it!, we would have liked to have seen because it sounded funny. One such scene, taking place after some unfortunate violence, actually makes sense not to show because seeing someone actually beat up could potentially destroy the fairy tale world of crime the filmmakers have created. In Collinwood, no one ever seems to get murdered, sell drugs, or even be too bad a person, regardless of their criminal lifestyles. Still, characters are mentioned that never appear onscreen, including some interesting-sounding old ladies and a fiancé or two, and one cannot help but feel like these people should have been included in the actual story or written out altogether. Perhaps their scenes were cut, perhaps they will be added later, perhaps not. At this early stage in the film's production it feels like a flaw, but one that could hopefully be fixed by the time Collinwood reaches theaters.
More than anything else however, it is the performances that make this film work. Some, like Jeter, have less to work with than they normally do - Toto is a sweet character, but not really a 3-dimensional one. He exists almost entirely as comic relief. Similarly, George Clooney's extended cameo is almost surprisingly hilarious, not that we haven't come to expect as much from the actor. Still, he injects his few scenes with a knowing wit, playing a seemingly once ultra-cool criminal who appears to have been demoted to teaching these wannabes in a few scenes. He likes the other characters, but one still gets the impression that his character knows he belongs in a movie like Ocean's Eleven instead. His energy and his character stands out, almost a little too much. Luckily, he isn't in too much of Collinwood, or else he would have stolen the whole movie.
Other characters, like Riley and Pero, are more complex and are genuinely well-crafted. Riley is constantly torn between his (very real) need to pull in some money and his paternal instinct for his infant son. Macy is a talented actor and makes you feel that, if nothing else in this movie is important, he sure knows that his son is. His character is a loving husband and father, and more than anyone else you really feel his need for this particular Bellini. Among the most memorable scenes in the film are about his child, whether he be clearing the crowd in a boxing arena so his son will not be scared, or watching videos starring the infant whilst planning the heist. That none of the other characters mind is indicative of this film's infectious good nature - everyone, from the biggest jerk to the dopiest schmo, is almost hopelessly likeable and human.
Pero, in the interest of moving on, is a young man who may be very dumb, or may be the smartest one in the bunch, and not in some trick ending Keyser Soze way. Rockwell brings his charming lugness across so well that what no one seems to realize is that his character just might be a born leader, and although his charisma is felt, the fact that no one ever really realizes it just further proves how far down the criminal and societal food chains these people are. They have no delusions of grandeur, only hopes and dreams thereof. And these hopes and dreams are right on the sleeves of Leon's numerous, hopelessly out-of-place suits. Leon is the type of character who wears a bow tie to a robbery, or even to a vacant lot, for no really discernible reason except that perhaps he is ashamed of his Collinwood background. If Collinwood is the slum it appears to be, then Leon would rather look like he was slumming than like he actually belonged there.
The film is composed most amusingly of little touches just like Leon's suits, and ultimately that is all that can be said about it. Welcome to Collinwood is amusing, a trifle… not hilarious, and most certainly not ambitious. By the end of the film you almost wonder whether anything for most of these characters has really changed, Bellini or no Bellini. Because this is not a story of huge events of catastrophic consequences, but one of smalltime criminals in smalltime lives, attempting what is really a smalltime Bellini anyway. As a smalltime movie, Collinwood is just great. Funny, sweet, but very, very slight, Welcome to Collinwood looks like it will make an entertaining film when it is finished. Considering that that's all they seemed to have been trying for, that works out fine for me."
(Review submitted by Hollyfeld.)
Stay tuned...
That's all folks...
Jean-François Allaire (aka DeadPool)
Questions, comments, praise etc. Email me at deadpool@tnmc.org
Jean-François Allaire is TNMC's first columnist. At only 24 years old he has become a respected entertainment journalist, with his columns appearing in Corona's Coming Attractions and Scr(i)pt magazine. He also writes a monthly column in Screenwriters Monthly entitled 'The Last Word.' Hailing from Montreal this young writer is determined to dig up all the details on the movies before they hit your local theater. If you're part of a movie production then you really need to be talking to him.
