Review
WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT
Starring Gene Hackman, Ray Romano and Maura Tierney
Directed by Donald Petrie
Opens Friday, February 20
Check listings at your own peril
You know how great actors occasionally take well-paying roles in horrifyingly bad movies in order to balance out the number of good roles they accept that don’t pay so well?
We can only hope this is the rationale behind Gene Hackman’s presence in Welcome to Mooseport, which is alleged to be a comedy about what might happen if a former president of the United States (Hackman, as Monroe "Eagle" Cole) ran for mayoral office against a local handyman (Ray Romano, as Harold "Handy" Harrison) in small-town Maine. It’s hard to say if the film is intended as a lampoon of the electoral process or as a saccharine appeal to apathetic Middle Americans to get out and vote, but either way it is about as funny as a dangling chad.
Yet, even when you factor in the screwball idea that both of our eligible bachelors – er, I mean candidates – are after the same woman (Maura Tierney, as town veterinarian Sally Mannis), the implausibility of the scenario is the least of Mooseport’s problems. What’s worse is that syrup and satire form a rather soporific solution – so it’s no wonder this mixture of romantic comedy and political spoof suffers a sluggish performance in the polls. American politics may deserve a witty send-up more than ever, but this film is just not committed, clever or nasty enough to win the race.
For a caustic satire with much higher stakes, I’d recommend the oft-overlooked black comedy The Contender (2000), starring Joan Allen and Jeff Bridges – there was a film that lived up to the talent in its cast. |
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