JACK
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Robin Williams, Diane Lane, Jennifer Lopez, Brian Kerwin, Bill Cosby, Adam Zolotin, Fran Drescher. Screenplay: James DeMonaco, Gary Nadeau. Director: Francis Ford Coppola. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Once upon a time, Francis Ford Coppola was one of the most revered directors in the world, the creator of classic films like THE GODFATHER, THE GODFATHER PART 2 and THE CONVERSATION, part of an American renaissance of the 1970s which included names like Scorsese, Spielberg and Altman. Then came films which politely could be called ambitious failures -- ONE FROM THE HEART, THE COTTON CLUB, TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM -- and mixed critical reception for his third GODFATHER film and BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA. It has been four years since DRACULA, more time to wonder if Coppola could once again summon that special something. What he has summoned instead is JACK, a frustrating patchwork of slapstick and sentimentality in which almost everything feels forced.
JACK begins with expectant parents Karen (Diane Lane) and Brian Powell (Brian Kerwin) receiving an unexpected surprise at a costume party: Karen goes into labor, despite being only ten weeks pregnant. However, the baby she delivers appears to be full-term, leading doctors to conclude that he has a genetic anomaly which causes him to age four times faster than normal. Indeed, when Jack Powell (Robin Williams) is ten years old, he looks like a forty year old man, and is kept at home to be instructed by a tutor (Bill Cosby). But Jack longs for the company of other children, and finally his parents allow him to enter the fifth grade. Naturally, he is treated as a freak by his classmates, but when he is accepted by a boy named Louie (Adam Zolotin), Jack begins to learn what it means to have friends.
At least that's what I think he learns. One of the reasons JACK feels so muddled is that it is a film without a clear sense of who its vibrant character is. In films of this type, where someone who is "different" teaches those who are "normal" some Valuable Life Lessons(TM), the main character usually isn't that character, but rather the catalyst who inspires others to change. Those others might be Jack's classmates, who come to accept and even to love him, and Louie gets a heartfelt and inspiring speech to share those feelings. At other times it appears that Jack is supposed to be the character who is meant to change; he too gets a heartfelt and inspiring speech. Diane Lane doesn't get a heartfelt and inspiring speech, just plenty of heartfelt looks to tell us that she is learning to be less protective of Jack. There is no law which states that only one character in a film can change, but we have to know with whom we are meant to identify, and Coppola spends so much time being heartfelt that he fails to provide a definite protagonist.
That leaves JACK as a message film in which there is no clear message. According to Louie's speech, it is that we should all remain kids at heart; according to Jack's speech, it is that we should live each day to the fullest. JACK will quite naturally inspire a great deal of comparison to 1988's BIG, but BIG was a pure fantasy which never felt the need to underline its lessons. Coppola and screenwriters James DeMonaco and Gary Nadeau try to incorporate scenes of boys-will-be-boys playfulness (and who among us hasn't been initiated into a club by lighting our bodily gases or eating disgusting food mixtures), as if to tell us "we're just having fun here." That might be easier to accept if they hadn't also overwhelmed simple moments like Jack calculating his mortality with the uberdramatic voice-over, "What do I want to be when I grow up? Alive."
JACK's ace-in-the-hole would seem to be never-quite-grown-up Robin Williams in the lead role, but there is something about his performance which feels uncertain. Admittedly it is an extremely challenging part -- he's playing not just a 10-year-old, but a maladjusted 10-year-old -- but Williams more often seems to be acting like a 6-year-old, just a step away from the baby-talk character he often used in his stand-up comedy routines, while his 10-year-old co-stars often act like they're 16. Williams is a sharp, quick-witted performer, and he always seems to be struggling when he's asked to play whimsical (remember TOYS, or BEING HUMAN?).
Coppola certainly knows how to make a good-looking film, with some clever touches like shots of Jack's light-up sneakers. But JACK usually comes off as sentiment without sense, and comedy without a foundation. Once upon a time, Francis Ford Coppola appeared to know all there was to know about making movies. Now, he doesn't even seem to know JACK.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 growing pains: 4.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw
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