JACK and TIN CUP
A film review by Jim Maguire
Copyright 1996 Jim Maguire
JACK Starring : Adam Zolodin, Fran Drescher, Bill Cosby and Robin Williams. Directed by : Francis Ford Coppola.
TIN CUP Starring : Kevin Costner, Rene Russo, Don Johnson and Cheech Marin.
Directed by : Ron Shelton.
Comebacks. They mean something. A comeback can be better than it would be if the director or the star of the movie wouldn't have had two good back-to-back films.
Both Ron Shelton (COBB) and Francis Ford Coppola needed a comeback. Coppola needed one because he hasn't made a good film in ages, all the way back to APOLOCALYPSE NOW. Shelton, whose disaterous COBB made my top 5 worst films of the year, looked like it was made by a wild crazy lunatic who had no idea on the subject of filming. They both put forth movies now, TIN CUP for Shelton, and JACK for Coppola. It would seem that Shelton, whose name is not as catchy in Hollywood as Coppola's, would have a long way to come. But, Coppola panicked at the last second, and threw some hypier-sad fluff at us. Shelton played it cool, and therefore his movie just works. It works on every level.
Speaking about comebacks, need I mention Kevin Costner and Bill Cosby. Costner hasn't made a good film since DANCES WITH WOLVES, and he hasn't made anything thrilling, (not counting pictures with budgets over 150 million) since FIELD OF DREAMS, and even then he had to use a character actors help in James Earl Jones. With bombs like WATERWORLD and THE WAR, Costner HAS BEEN blown out. He's nothing in the Hollywood arena. He only got in this film because of Shelton, who worked with him on BULL DURHAM. Bill Cosby, who never can explore much in any character, needed some variety to boost his upcoming ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE based on the British comedy. They both freeze out here.
JACK is about two parents who have a baby, and find out that he is ageing four times too fast. So, by the time JACK is ten, he'll have the body, and the body organs of a forty-year old. He's tutored by Bill Cosby, who's the only real reason this film is close to surviving. Cosby's very charimatic, surprisingly subtle, and if anything, cool. Of course, who else to play the forty year old that Robin Williams. Williams is in the middle of a great stretch of his career, playing characters that are totally centered around their comic tension, and nothing around sentimentality. JACK fails for this reason. Williams yells and screams, and looks and sounds like a ten year old Jodie Foster in NELL. So, Williams shouldn't be there. He's wasted his talent playing someone with too much well, character, that he ends up losing the character. Was this supposed to be an Oscar attempt for Williams? Was this supposed to bring him to the top? THE BIRDCAGE did that. I expected everything that was in MRS. DOUBTFIRE, THE BIRDCAGE, and JUMANJI combined. That was a high expectation, but I got none of it. Also, Williams doesn't play JACK right, either. Does your ten-year old child crawl into a slide underport and ask her teacher if she wants a gummi-bear? Does he jump up and down, get scary dreams and leap into your bed at night. Jack eventually meets a friend. How nice, Jack gets a friend. Adam Zolodin daftly plays 'the friend' role, with his very ditzy mother played by Fran Drecsher. The movie's real arrogance is that it actually expects us to laugh, cry and get touched. So much for that idea.
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