BENNY & JOON
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Can one schizophrenic find love with
another? BENNY & JOON says yes if the world of normal people
does not tear them apart. This is a film that will click
with you or it won't. I did not click for me. Rating: 0 (-4
to +4).
There is a sort of film that works really well for a very narrow audience and will leave almost everybody else wondering, "What was that all about?" It is a film with a narrow band of powerful appeal. One of the films that I thought really spoke to me was HAROLD AND MAUDE (1972). Other were JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (1971) and KNIGHTRIDERS (1981). One that missed me entirely was BIRDY (1984). I think I can see what others like about BIRDY, but the film does not work very well for me. Another film that just does not do it for me is BENNY & JOON.
Benny (played by Aidan Quinn) has no time for a life of his own. Benny's life is split between his auto repair business and taking care of his sister Joon (played by Mary Stuart Masterson). Joon is ... well, Joon is somewhat different. Perhaps writer Barry Berman intended Joon to be schizophrenic, though it is never actually said that is the case. Whatever her problem is, she spends her table passionately painting, setting things on fire, placing emergency calls to Benny to pick up peanut butter, directing traffic with ping-pong paddles and snorkel--that sort of thing.
Then Joon loses a poker game and for Benny to pay off, he has to take in a second person whose mental processes are different from the norm, Sam, the cousin of a friend. Sam (played by Johnny Depp) is barely literate but has patterned himself on Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. He dresses like Keaton and can even mimic Keaton's inventive style of seeing unconventional uses for everyday objects. The tension of the story comes from Joon's doctor wanting to institutionalize Joon, Benny wanting to keep Joon around, Joon wanting to keep Sam around, and Benny wanting to be rid of Sam.
Where the story does not work for me is on the contrivance and in the view of mental illness. With the exception of short bouts of panic, Joon appears to be on a perpetual high. Sam's illness appears to make him a comic genius--though most, and for all I know, all, of his routines are borrowed from silent films. Sam's illness increases his creativity and the film arranges for the right props to be at the right place and time to be used. The film says that mental illness has its positive side and that like in MANHUNTER and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, only the mentally ill can understand the mentally ill. The film is an interesting attempt but I rate it only a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
[Viewed at the Hazlet Multiplex Cinemas, Hazlet, NJ.]
Mark R. Leeper
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