Why The Christmas Films Don't Sparkle

• Share

'Tis the season to be jowly. After pursuing the youth market most of the year, Hollywood devotes December to prestige films aimed not at the huge post- Christmas audience but at the senior citizens in the Motion Picture Academy. The goal is a batch of Oscar nominations; the reality is a glut of ambitious pictures that give no one a very merry Christmas. Of seven holiday movies, all but one ignore Hollywood's hard-learned rules of storytelling:

A Life Is Not an Epic. When David Lean died, did he take the secret of epic movies with him? Lean knew that life is full of dramatic events, but it's what's inside that counts; the enthralling vistas matter less than the interior vision. That lesson is lost on Hollywood, whose idea of epic biography is a story of a big shot (Gandhi, Bugsy Siegel, Malcolm X) who got shot. Violent death is meant to lend tragic grandeur.

Hence Hoffa, an utterly externalized view of the corrupt, crusading boss of the Teamsters, James R. Hoffa. The R stood for Riddle, and David Mamet's lean script is content to leave him at that. Hoffa does stuff -- bullies management, connives with the Mob -- but who is he? The movie gives not a clue. Jack Nicholson looks eerily like his subject, and he has the abrupt gestures and staccato voice of a man who overcomes lack of eloquence by force of will. But director Danny DeVito, who also plays Hoffa's closest ally, gets way too fond of slo-mo shots and swooping cameras; instead of a hard-edge portrait, we get painting on velvet. It's epic-style vamping around the void of epic character.

If You Must Make an Epic, Be Sure You Have the Right Subject. Genius is one- tenth inspiration and nine-tenths obsession. Chaplin makes you think it is ten-tenths passivity, a matter of landing in the right place at the right time. So Richard Attenborough's film breaks new ground. Instead of casting Charlie Chaplin in an unnaturally heroic mold, it makes him a distracted twit who wanders through his life as if it belonged to someone else.

All the things that shaped the immortal mime -- his Victorian sentimentality (of which his passion for underage girls was the most obvious, least agreeable part), his pretense to intellectuality, the torments of his vast celebrity -- are only vaguely alluded to. These are tough topics, wrong for the form (and indulgent attitude) Attenborough has chosen. Robert Downey Jr., who plays Chaplin, might have been up to them, but this episodic film gives him only cautious scenes, not an incautious character, to play.

A Movie Sound Track Should Be Accompanied by a Movie. The Leap of Faith album is a little masterpiece of gospel music, mixing the real thing (as performed by the Angels of Mercy, Patti LaBelle, Albertina Walker) with soulful tributes from pop acolytes (John Pagano, Wynonna Judd, Lyle Lovett). But the movie, like The Bodyguard, doesn't live up to the craft or fervor of its music. This tale of a tent-show evangelist (Steve Martin) -- he promises "miracles and wonders" while lining his pockets with the gullible hopes of decent people -- can't even take energy from Martin's holy rants and amazing body wit.