PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
Films that romanticize a sport where you dress like a mama's boy and whack a ball with a stick are inherently stupid. You can't even call it a sport, since the only way a player can break into a sweat is if they weigh over 300 pounds. There's nothing spiritual or magical about the game (you can get sand in your shoes at the beach, too), which is why Happy Gilmore and Caddyshack are better golf films than Tin Cup and The Legend of Bagger Vance.
Vance was directed by Robert Redford (The Horse Whisperer), so right off the bat you know it's going to be long, slow, beautifully photographed, full of inspirational music and will most likely feature a lead character who looks like Redford did 30 or 40 years ago (like Ralph Fiennes in Quiz Show and Brad Pitt in A River Runs Through It). This time up, it's Matt Damon (The Talented Mr. Ripley)
Damon plays Rannulph Junuh, a legendary Southern golfer who amazed fans with long drives and a delicate short game in pre-World War I Savannah. During the war, Captain Junuh lost all of his men in battle (in a choppy Saving Private Ryan-ish scene) and came home to Georgia as a craggy drunk unable to play the game because he'd `lost his swing.'
Meanwhile, Junuh's ex-girlfriend Adele (Charlize Theron, The Yards) has inherited a struggling golf resort from her father, who offed himself as the country's depression left his new business without any customers. The only way Adele can keep the place from folding is to hold a gimmicky exhibition golf tournament between the nation's top two golfers – Bobby Jones (Joel Gretsch, who looks like Damon's doppelganger) and Walter Hagen (Bruce McGill, The Insider). But the only way Savannah's leaders will sign off on the contest is if a local golfer is allowed to compete.
Enter Junuh, who is suggested to represent the city by young Hardy Greaves (J. Michael Moncrief, in his film debut), a pre-pubescent chap who has heard incredible stories about the once-great local legend. Junuh, of course, doesn't want to have anything to do with the tournament, but he comes around when a mystical black caddy named Bagger Vance (Will Smith, Men in Black) literally appears out of nowhere and helps the fraught golfer find his swing again.
Vance then proceeds to follow the typical sports flick formula – perform badly at first, get better and better before swooning a little, and then … well, I'm not going to give away the ending, but you can probably figure it out on your own. The last hole unwinds over an ass-numbing 15 minutes, meaning that this movie about golf is actually, at times, as exciting as real golf.
As a long-time promoter of edgy, independent cinema, Redford seems like he should be above this kind of schmaltz. Vance tries too hard to find its way into your heart (but, thankfully, not as hard as Pay It Forward) with sweeping music (Rachel Portman, The Cider House Rules) and sun-drenched cinematography (Michael Ballhaus, What Planet Are You From?). Judianna Makovsky's (Pleasantville) costumes – especially the hats – are the standout from Vance's behind-the-camera talent.
Vance was based on a novel by Steven Pressfield and was adapted by Jeremy Leven (Don Juan DeMarco). The film is narrated by an older version of Hardy Greaves (Jack Lemmon, Tuesdays With Morrie), which adds another layer of the aforementioned schmaltz to the overall package. As far as the acting goes, Damon does well, but Smith is the standout. Here, he's turned down to a `6' (as opposed to the usual `10' or `11' he's usually cranked up to). His understated performance, a technique he used in his best film to date (Six Degrees of Separation), is reminiscent of a younger version of Morgan Freeman in Driving Miss Daisy.
2:07 – PG-13 for adult language and mild sexual content
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