A WALK ON THE MOON RATING: 5 / 10 --> Not good
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Remember the dude who was Patrick Swayze's friend in GHOST (8/10), and then screwed him over in the name of greed? Yeah? Well, his name was Tony Goldwyn and this film is his directorial debut.
PLOT: Square husband takes his frustrated wife and blossoming daughter to their annual retreat in the Catskills mountains. During their stay, the husband has to constantly drive back to town for work, leaving the wife to glad-eye the local free-spirited blouse salesman, and the daughter to enjoy her initial rites of passage into womanhood.
CRITIQUE: This film did not offer me any new insight into the human condition, the late sixties, the Jewish getaways, humor, blouse salesmen or the flowering of a young girl. It did however include a typical 60s hippie soundtrack (if you like that kind of thing), a great performance put forth by the underrated Diane Lane, who projects the wife's utter desperation very effectively, and Viggo Mortensen. Now despite his character's lack of depth and absence of emotion, Viggo still managed to hold my attention simply by his form as an actor, his presence as a bonafide moochacho, and his slick mane. Ironically, I kept joking to my friend that they could've just called this film the "Blouse Man" solely on the number of times they coined those words. It is only later that I found out that the makers behind this yawn-fest had originally had the foresight to title it "Blouse Man". Oy vey!
The husband in this film was also a disappointment by the way of the lackluster performance given by the miscast Liev Shrieber, and his character's ultimately unconvincing actions. In fact, for a film that features a faithful Jewish wife cheating on her husband at the Woodstock concert no less, this movie offered very little actual drama, and a resolution that just seemed a little too tidy for my taste. Anna Paquin was good as the confused daughter, but all of her transformations have already been seen before in other better films, and the time dedicated to her character in this film, was simply not enough to care. Other than that, the jokes were all adult-oriented and lame for my taste, and the Woodstock scene was obviously shot within a group of fifteen people or so. All in all, I wouldn't recommend this film on any level, unless you are a huge Viggo fan (there's a shot of his ass in this one as well), enjoy sexual re-awakenings (via a couple of nicely shot sex scenes featuring the lovely Lane) and love the Diane Lane. Otherwise, this film offers a weak plot, very little in dramatic interest, and nothing memorable to offer cinema-goers.
Little Known Facts about this film and its stars: Most of the scenes in the Catskill mountains were actually shot up North in Montreal, Canada. Diane Lane was married to actor Christopher Lambert from 1988 to 1994, at which time, they got divorced. The voice of the social director at the camp is none other than the voice of Marge Simpson from TV's "The Simpsons", Julie Kavner. This film went through three other title changes before settling on the one set to its poster now: BLOUSE MAN, KISS THE SKY and OVER THE MOON. Local Montreal movie critic Bill Brownstein makes a cameo appearance as a customer in one scene at the husband TV repair workshop.
Review Date: April 11, 1999
Director: Tony Goldwyn
Writer: Pamela Gray
Producers: Dustin Hoffman, Tony Goldwyn and Jay Cohen
Actors: Diane Lane as Pearl Kantrowitz
Liev Schrieber as Marty Kantrowitz
Viggo Mortensen as Walker Jerome
Genre: Drama
Year of Release: 1999
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(c) 1999 Berge Garabedian
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