A charming break-out for Luke Wilson but not the role that provides with the dynamics we want. Touching with the right amount of mystery and great family viewing
Luke Wilson (“The Royal Tenenbaums”) gets a chance to shine in this heart warming new comedy by director Mark Pellington. Wilson is in the lead all the way, with supporting work by Radha Mitchell (“Finding Neverland”) Adriana Barraza (“Babel”) and George Lopez. The acting and screenwriting are on an even keel all the way through, with good pacing to the end. The overall feeling is very similar to Jim Carrey’s persona in “The Truman Show,” with an equally positive ending. This is a feel-good film about finding hope by simply believing in yourself, and in others.
Luke Wilson plays Henry Poole, a man who in his own description “won’t be here very long.” He buys an over-priced house without a whimper (from realtor Cheryl Hines---“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) and steadfastly rejects any and all invitations from his neighbors to interact. His past is a misty dream of parental rejection and lonely days huddling under a bridge in those ugly dried up flood control channels snaking through polluted Los Angeles. When it comes to depression, those shots alone are worth the price of admission.
Things get funny, and a bit mysterious, when neighbor Esperanza first shows up at his front door with some great looking tamales and then appears aging in his back yard reporting an apparition on his house. Making this funny takes a little doing, but Oscar / Golden Globe nominated (“Babel,” 2006) Adriana Barraza is up to the task and she carries the ball for this gag for most of the 100 minutes of the film.
Soon Father Salazar (George Lopez) joins Esperanza in investigating what appears to be a stigmata, complete with oozing blood, on the side of Henry’s newly stucco'd house. Word spreads, and the reluctant Poole, who is as gregarious as the suicidal Nicholas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas,” is suddenly, and extremely reluctantly, a local sensation. Poole drinks and prepares himself to waste away.
Cinematographer Eric Schmidt shoots the film as a cross between Pellington’s earlier work, “The Mothman Prophecies,” and “The Truman Show.” The lighting, ostensibly in Los Angeles, is completely flat and there are no shadows. More to the point, there is never anything shown beyond the fence in Poole’s back yard or perhaps the car in his front yard. The camera doggedly fences in the audience to force them to be like Henry Poole who is fenced in by his own, severe, depression.
Outsiders come into his life like ghosts from a different planet, offering him the ability to see only to be continuously refused. In the end it is by only the most marginal of contacts with the fatherless girl next door and the miraculously cured check-out clerk from the local market that he is able to see what possibilities might lay in his smudged stucco.
This film is Luke Wilson’s best work to date, although he is still under-acting. The movie gets slow in the end and would have been livelier if Jim Carrey had accepted the lead role (conflicting assignments forced him to decline). On the other hand, if Carrey had accepted the role, the film might have come off as too much of a “Truman Show” sequel.
Adriana Barraza steals the show as the neighbor next door who initially identifies the mysterious image on Poole’s house and keeps at him like Peter Falk’s Columbo until finally he is either unhinged completely or forced to accept life for what it is. A brief appearance by Richard Benjamin is funny enough, in itself. A very nice piece of work by a relatively new director and a relatively new cast, with no violence or sexual shenanigans. Great viewing for the whole family, but lacking in the edginess of the director’s earlier “Mothman.”
Directed by: Mark Pellington
Starring: Luke Wilson, Radha Mitchell and Adriana Barraza
Release: August 15, 2008
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