Robert Wilonsky is at it again. He's among the agent provacateurs making the L.A. Weekly look foolish from the inside. Here's what he had to say about the latest film to come out on a Friday that nobody will remember by Monday.
Resurrecting the Champ is a great movie about journalism — maybe the best there ever was — because Resurrecting the Champ is mind-erasingly boring. It’s a solid story about the newspaper business — specifically, about how a well-intentioned writer occasionally makes a mistake totally by accident, a mistake that is pretty much victimless and easily fixable with a retraction. And on that front, it’s a knockout — if only because watching it will render you unconscious for nearly two hours.
Actually, this first paragraph is the reason why Hollywood never makes movies about movie critics. If journalism is mind-erasingly boring, what are we to make of movie reviews?
Josh Hartnett plays Erik, a Denver Times sports reporter whose dead pop was a boxing announcer back in the 1950s (which, given the present-day setting, seems way too early for someone Hartnett’s age). Erik’s been relegated to the boxing beat, where he churns out workmanlike prose his editor (Alan Alda) damns as instantly forgettable. Lack of talent doesn’t stop Erik from wanting to be his dead daddy — beloved, important.
Then one night after a fight, Erik spies an old man (Samuel L. Jackson) in an alleyway being savagely beaten by frat fucks wanting to level “Champ, No. 3 in the World!” That’s how the man — a former heavyweight contender, now a homeless punching bag swaddled in tatters — describes himself. So Erik does what all journalists do when they stumble across a good story: He interviews the Champ, reads about the Champ, watches some old film of the Champ, and writes a story about the Champ — a story that makes Erik an instant star. Soon he’s wooed by Teri Hatcher’s Showtime exec, who wants his pretty face on TV and in her bed.
Only, Erik didn’t do quite enough research. He relied on an editorial assistant who claimed there wasn’t much to go on — a thin folder full of ancient newspaper clips and a single two-minute black-and-white videotape. He didn’t conduct extra interviews and took the word of a single source who’s been homeless for God knows how long and will likely say anything in exchange for the promise of restored fame, newfound riches or, at the very least, an occasional warm meal in front of a tape recorder. So Erik discovers too late that his Champ has made him a chump. Happens all the time — the single-source story that comes back to bite the writer on the ass.
If you're still reading right now, it's a minor miracle. How did you make it through the topor that is this Wilonsky's writing. He is perhaps the only writer in recent memory to mention Teri Hatcher in an article that no male is interesting in reading.
That’s what Resurrecting the Champ (which draws loose inspiration from J.R. Moehringer’s 1997 Los Angeles Times Magazine article of the same title) gets right: the dull grind of reporting and researching and writing, and the dull thud caused by a mistake made during that wearying process. Ace in the Hole this ain’t; Sweet Smell of Success neither.
Gee, in your hands, Robert Wilonsky, I could see why reporting would be a dull grind. I'm getting the impression the male stripping profession would be a dull grind if Wilonsky was a practioner of it. By the way, give Wilonsky a cookie for name-dropping "Ace in the Hole" and "Sweet Smell of Success" - he still has a New Beverly Cinema calendar from 1994 on his fridge to refer to. Great double feature!
But director Rod Lurie, a former Los Angeles magazine movie critic, can always find the overwrought in the mundane; his filmography (The Last Castle, The Contender, Deterrence) is stocked with bombastic movies in which a timpani’s deafening rumble accompanies every sideways glance. He and the screenwriters — Allison Burnett (responsible for the saccharine Autumn in New York) and Michael Bortman (virtually unheard from since 1996’s Morgan Freeman–Keanu Reeves pairing in Chain Reaction) — portray Erik as some guilt-ridden evildoer who’s perpetrated a great fraud. They demand a kind of teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing suffering of which Erik isn’t worthy (and Hartnett isn’t capable). Erik’s wife (Kathryn Morris), from whom he’s separated for nothing as interesting as an indiscretion (they can’t communicate, yawn), tells him he’s brought shame upon himself and the paper. Not hardly. The dude goofed. Big friggin’ whoop.
Hmmmm, Lurie, a former movie critic-turned-movie-maker. Any wonder why this critique is so friggin' negative and bitter? Sorry, Wilonsky, nobody wants to buy your romantic comedy-set-in-the-Civil-War screenplay with the singing barnyard animals, buddy! Too high concept!
Billy Ray tried to turn Glass’ fabrications at The New Republic into a thriller, and he wound up with Shattered Glass, a sardonic parody of All the President’s Men. Because Lurie doesn’t have the benefit of such exciting raw material, he peddles that brand of male-bonding cinema in which a kid lets down his adoring elders even as he struggles to live up to the memory of the dead dad he never knew. In the 1980s and ’90s, this particular cinematic subgenre had its own label: The Tom Cruise Movie. And, really, is there no better actor suited for the Top Gun Mach II or Pour Another Cocktail phase of his career than Josh Hartnett, who looks, at least, as deep as a drained kiddie pool.
RESURRECTING THE CHAMP | Directed by ROD LURIE | Written by MICHAEL BORTMAN and ALLISON BURNETT | Produced by MIKE MEDAVOY, BOB YARI, MARC FRYDMAN and LURIE | Released by Yari Film Group Releasing | Citywide
"Top Gun Mach II." Funny. That's clever. "Pour Another Cocktail." Wilonsky, you're on a roll! Do your buddies who hang out with you in your mom's basement (where you live) nickname you "Comedy Central" Wilonsky? Don't stop now with the goofball movie titles. Hey, MAD magazine! Still hiring?!
Actually, "Shattered Glass" was NOT a sardonic parody of "All the President's Men," it was a very good and decidely NOT dull movie about journalism that stood tall on its own merits. And Wilonsky is in desperate need of a girlfriend (if he swings that way) or some success in his writing career to cheer him up, even if he's shooting fish in a barrel with a review of a film that is an insult to people who rather enjoy the Great White Hope movie genre. Or is this the "Magical Negro" film? Who knows which wretched cliche this movie embraces -- Wilonsky is too busy railing against movies about journalism!
This is KARRY LING reporting for CRITICIDE!
