Keanu Goes To Hell

1. "Bigger Than The Sky." You... well, okay, I... always want to be able to support "little" movies over the big, gigantic studio blockbusters. But sometimes the "little" movies are just so little... and sometimes, so specialized... that they just don't grab you the way you want a movie to do. That's the case with "Bigger Than The Sky", a perfectly "nice" little film that just doesn't go much of anywhere.

This is the story of a Portland, Oregon resident who's just been dumped by his girlfriend, and, looking for something to snap him out of his depression, spots a sign outside a local community playhouse for auditions for a new production of "Cyrano de Bergerac". He's never acted before, but he figures, why not?... and the experiences he goes through when he's cast as Cyrano himself change his life and those of several other cast members.

Audience members who've been involved in community theatre will probably love this one, but with the sole exception of "Waiting For Guffman", I don't think I've ever seen a film about community theatre that's done anything for me. The cast of "Bigger Than The Sky" is appealing and gives quite good performances, but most of the roles aren't much... certainly nowhere near as colorful as the Christopher Guest film. It's nice to see Amy Smart (the play's Roxanne) in an actual ROLE instead of another piece of teen exploitation, and John Corbett gives it his all as the seemingly nice guy playing Christian who, as it turns out, has a few secrets in his past... but it's hard to work up a whole lot of concern for their fates. There are at least two (or is it three?) outstanding characters/performances: Sean Astin is a delight as the insufferably egotistical actor who might potentially be about to become the NEW Cyrano, and his mother, Patty Duke, has a ball playing eccentric twin sisters (echoes of "The Patty Duke Show") who both work behind the scenes for the theatre company. The screen lights up whenever either of them is on.

Astin and Duke are both supporting players, though, and I spent most of "Bigger Than The Sky" 's running time waiting for not Guffman, but for something to come along and get me excited about what I was watching. After all, I've felt that way in the past about "little" films where not a lot happens. The difference is, though, that though the events may have been small in those films, the emotions were still big. Pretty much everything is "little" in "Bigger Than The Sky."

2. "Constantine". Or, Keanu Reeves goes to Hell (sorry, you non-Keanu fans, you don't ACTUALLY get to see that in this film). Based on the DC comic series "Hellblazer" (which I've never read), "Constantine" is the story of John Constantine, a man born with the unfortunate ability... you might call it a curse... of being able to see the demons and angels that actually live among us masquerading as human beings. This ability finally drove him to take his own life... but he was revived, and spends all his time now as a freelance exorcist sending all manner of Hellspawn back where they came, in hopes of being able to buy his way into Heaven when he leaves this mortal realm next time. In this film, he comes to the aid of a police woman (Rachel Weisz of the "Mummy" films) who's convinced her twin sister's death was the result of supernatural causes and not a suicide, as most believe.

There's certainly no shortage of spectacular effects here... Hell really looks as frightening as you'd expect it to, and those demons certainly don't LOOK like CGI... but there's no escaping Keanu in the lead. I've enjoyed some of his movies, like "Speed" and the first "Matrix", but in spite of him, not because of him. Reeves was actually a very promising actor for a few years very early on, but except for his supporting role in "Something's Gotta Give" he's struck me as seeming like he was literally sleepwalking through his paerformances in everything he's done in the past decade or so. There has to be something really unique or special about a Keanu Reeves movie other than Keanu himself to get me excited about it, and "Constantine" doesn't have it.

What it does have is a lot of mystical mumbo jumbo about a bargain between God and the Devil about the fate of the human race that has nothing to do with the Bible or any new agey books I've ever seen, but comes across like a warmed-over souffle of bits and pieces of both. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that this is really COMPLICATED mystical mumbo jumbo... if the film had all the scenes in which Reeves explains to some other character what all this means edited out, the result would probably be a half-hour short.

Weisz has been interesting in some small, independent films but she doesn't seem to be very involved in the commercial stuff she does, and in "Constantine" she says virtually every line in the same monotone and might as well be wearing a rubber mask for all the change in facial expression you get. Then there's the attempts at humor... "attempts" is exactly the word.

Is there anything worth watching in "Constantine"? Well, yes... though just like "Bigger Than The Sky", it's in the supporting role department. Tilda Swynton is terrific as the angel Gabriel, but a Gabriel unlike any you've ever seen... a haunting, sinister, androgynous Gabriel who's quite willing to commit any amount of evil if it will result in ultimate good. Oh, IF ONLY this movie were called "Gabriel"...
but you can't have everything. In fact, in the case of "Constantine", you can't even have very much.

3. "Because Of Winn-Dixie." Looked at in a cold, clinical fashion, there are all sorts of reasons why "Because Of Winn-Dixie" shouldn't work.
It stars a cute kid and a cuter dog, it's full of all kinds of life lessons, it features a rock singer in a major role, and it doesn't do the Newberry medal winning book it's based on full justice. So why do I ultimately give a "thumbs up"... something Ebert and Roper certainly didn't do?

No, it's not just because (author of the original novel) Kate Decamillo is a Minnesota resident these days. And not because Jeff Daniels is given a rare role that lets him play something other than an annoying doofus (though that helps). And CERTAINLY not because of the creepy and obvious CGI effects used whenever the dog "smiles." So what, then?

Story: a preacher whose wife has left him and their young daughter live isolated, friendless lives in a small Florida town in which apparently every other long-time residents are locked in their own little worlds, as well. Then one day, while at the local Winn-Dixie supermarket, the daughter "adopts" the runaway stray dog who's tearing up the store and names him after the place she found her new, and only, friend. Winn-Dixie will eventually turn the lives of most of the town's citizens around.

Well, Daniels actually is pretty good here, and newcomer Ann Sophie Robb as his daughter is considerably more natural than a lot of child actors... she's more child than actor, which is good. And let's face it, it really IS hard to resist the little dog playing Winn-Dixie... as corny and hoky as it might seem to have a dog change a whole town's lives, if that could be possible, this would be the dog to do it. It's difficult to argue with the story's basic message about friendship and making a difference in the lives of others, too, even if the original book got that message across with a bit less sentiment.

The book gives us a solid foundation, side-stepping a lot of obvious pitfalls, and the film, while losing something in the translation to the screen, maintains quite a bit of that approach (and, incidentally, stays surprisingly faithful to the novel's story). When you consider that things like "The Spongebob Squarepants Movie" and "Racing Stripes" are currently trying to separate moviegoing kids from their parents' money, you could certainly do a lot worse. There are films like "Bigger Than The Sky", which ought to work but don't, and then there are movies like "Because Of Winn-Dixie", which probably shouldn't work (as I mentioned, Ebert and Roper sure don't think it does)...but which, nonetheless, do. Well, at least I think they do, for all that matters.