"Drowning Mona" Reviewed by Christian Pyle Directed by Nick Gomez Written by Peter Steinfeld Starring Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Neve Campbell, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Casey Affleck Grade: C+
Welcome to the tiny hamlet of Verplank, NY, where everyone drives a Yugo with vanity plates. (If you drove a Yugo, would you want to advertise the fact?) The most hated woman in town, Mona Dearly (Bette Midler), just took a fatal plunge into the lake. The cause: cut brake lines. Suspects? There's her husband Phil (William Fichtner) who's having an affair with waitress Rona Mace (Jamie Lee Curtis). Or her dimwitted son Jeff (or Jeph, it's spelled one way on his vanity plates and another on his key chain) (Marcus Thomas) who lost his right hand to Mona's anger. How about Jeff's partner Bobby Calzone (Casey Affleck)? Jeff and Mona were destroying his landscaping business. Don't forget Bobby's fiancee Ellen Rash (Neve Campbell); if Bobby's business sinks, so does her future. Sorting it all out is Police Chief Wyatt Rash (Danny DeVito), Ellen's father.
That seems like a promising set-up for a murder mystery, but the clues are painfully obvious to interpret. However, the inscrutable Chief Rash seems slow to see the connections. Screenwriter Peter Steinfeld rejects suspense in his quest for quirky humor. Sometimes he hits the target, more often he misses. Steinfeld also sacrifices the believability of characters. He seems to plot the movie by asking at each juncture "What's the goofiest plot twist I can throw in here?" rather than "What would this character do here?"
The cast works hard to make the deliberately odd script work. Neve Campbell was especially good. She seems to have been invigorated by being a character actor rather than the lead. William Fichtner and Marcus Thomas are funny as the survivors of the dysfunctional Dearly family. In the numerous flashbacks, Bette Midler plays a bitch-on-wheels with verve. The weak link is Casey Affleck, whose character is more or less the protagonist in this ensemble. I couldn't decide whether Affleck was a really bad actor or just giving a good performance as the timid and awkward Bobby. Either way he was painful to watch, and I kept hoping he'd drown.
Bottom line: "Drowning Mona" really wants to be "Fargo," but it never comes close. However, despite the one glaring exception, the stellar cast makes a superb effort and manages to wring some laughs out of it.
© 2000 Christian L. Pyle
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