Author Topic: Reign Over Me  (Read 2129 times)

jeffdaddy

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Reign Over Me
« on: March 24, 2007, 11:45:04 PM »
Reign Over Me isn’t a bad movie.  It’s a phenomenally bad movie.  Brutally bad.  Sam and Adam were far too merciful (I can’t tell you why) even though you could almost sense they knew better.  God love ‘em, so forgive me while I rant at length.

Adam, in fact, listed several of the film’s glaring problems in the podcast, as well as detailing another at length (the harpy wife cliché) in the most recent Dope Sheet.  Throw in the Psycho Hottie side-character that eventually becomes the dream hook-up for our beloved Charlie (just to name one) and the sum total of all the film’s problems makes Reign Over Me one gigantic contrivance.

This film lacks one solitary moment that rings true.  It’s ALL made up.  It takes real issues, real situations, and real problems and then gives us the Hollywood version of every single one of them.  The script’s adherence to formula would make Syd Field proud (and that’s a slam, just for the record).  It hits every single beat you expect it to, exactly when you expect it to and exactly how you expect it to, which makes the ultimate breakdown scene by Charlie (that Sam and Adam praised) a predictable inevitability rather than a powerful or true moment. 

And even that’s filled with clichés.  His memories of his girls are artificially perfect (they and his wife would wake him up every Saturday morning singing Beatles songs…oh, the perfect life they had!).  Why not make his memories those things that would be mundane to most but special to him?  Okay, that too could be a cliché but at least its closer to reality.  So while Sandler’s performance is admirable, Binder’s overwrought scripting and heavy-handed direction just makes me want to scream GIVE ME AN EFFING BREAK ALREADY!  (That expression isn’t exclusive to The Breakdown scene, just to clarify.)

The whole film is littered with this crap.  As Adam pointed out, it’s often far too clever/cutesy/sassy for its own good – and then it gets worse when it becomes too self-important for its own depth.  The pop psychology on display here -- a classic Hollywood trap that leads to endless eye-rolling -- is really painful.  This is best epitomized by Charlie’s constant kitchen remodeling, the (beautiful) completion of which coincides with his moving out and making the first steps of finally moving on.  How obvious and simple and so completely Hollywood.  Psychiatrists will watch this film and laugh.  At it.

Binder’s film reminds me of the type of bad TV I try to avoid.  It means well, but it has no bearing in the real world, and ultimately it's more concerned without how clever it can be and is more than willing to sacrifice reality along the way. 

OH—and one of the biggest Hollywood sins of all on display here is that of creating a lazy convenience.  Whenever a studio film needs a character to be able to wallow in his/her pain for years and yet still survive (you know, be able to eat, have a home, exist and not be homeless, etc.) they just make the person independently (and inexplicably) wealthy.  This isn’t restricted to just grieving people, mind you, but it is common to them.  Binder doesn’t want to mess with the actual REAL complication of MOST PEOPLE in this situation – i.e. how do you continue to live, work, interact, etc. – when they have this kind of loss.  No, let’s just make the guy worth millions.  That solves that problem.  Ugh.

It comes as no surprise that in their Charlie Rose interview, both Sandler and Cheadle cited their biggest challenge with this script was understanding the characters!  No kidding?! They found it hard to connect with who they were, fundamentally, to even understand them, their motivations, reasoning, thinking, etc.  They jokingly cited this because Binder was sitting right there, but thankfully they copped to it (and, for me, validated my entire response to the film).  The motivations are so weak and thin here (Cheadle’s Allen, especially), and neither character is an authentic, real person.  No wonder they had a hard time connecting with them!  (Sandler said that after a lot of hard work, research, talking to Binder, etc., he just “made a decision” how he was going to do this and went with it.) 

The two leads – like everything else in the film – are formulaic contrivances.  Sandler and Cheadle do their best with formidable talents to elevate the material but they can’t; the material is that bad (especially as directed by the guy who wrote it).  Sandler’s talents are especially done in.  No matter how deep he tries to go, the artificiality of the material and the direction of it make his Charlie nothing more than a “Bob Dylan meets Rainman” caricature.

Oh, and if I were Jada Pinkett Smith, I would’ve thrown the script right back in Binder’s face, I would’ve been so insulted.  I hope at the very least she was compensated well for acting in such a commonly-thankless stereotype of a female role.

I will say this for it, though: the city looked great.  Beautifully photographed and edited.  But that’s all I can say for it.

Wow, I hated this movie.

Brian Z

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Re: Reign Over Me
« Reply #1 on: March 25, 2007, 08:42:27 PM »
Yeah, I don't think I hated it as much as you did but I sure didn't care for it. I found Sandler and Cheadle to be able to rise the material here and there to decency but that is about it.

roner

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Re: Reign Over Me
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2007, 06:50:00 PM »
I think I too liked this a little better than jeffdaddy but it is a such a bad mish-mash that two really performances couldn't save it.  I really liked some of the ideas that were addressed: the friction in a friendship when one is married and the other is not, where do you draw the line of when someone really needs clinical help as opposed to that person still being a functional person, and I liked the idea of Cheadle's character struggling to find his identity outside of father and husband.  I think these are all great ideas for films.  Here though the ideas are just presented and never really developed.  I loved Binder's Upside of Anger, but here he failed. 

"No matter where you go, there you are."
                               -Buckaroo Banzai

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