The Little Mermaid

Year of release: 2023 Directed by Rob Marshall.             Starring Halle Bailey, Jacob Tremblay, Daveed Diggs, Awkwafina, Jonah Hauer-King, Javier Bardem, and Melissa McCarthy.

When the first teaser for Disney’s live action remake of The Little Mermaid dropped, the soundwaves surrounding it quickly became dominated by racist morons complaining that Ariel was no longer white with red hair. A part of me can’t believes I had to type that sentence in 2023, but here we are. What that toxic discourse covered up was how bad the teaser looked. I’m cynical enough to think Disney would not be above starting such racist bullshit as a marketing ploy, but regardless, the first focus on the film was the casting of Halle Bailey.

For the record, she is phenomenal and probably the best live action Disney princess to date. She’s substantially better than Emma Watson as Belle in the Beauty and the Beast remake, partially because her singing isn’t autotuned into oblivion, and partially because she captures the longing of a teenage mermaid for the unknown human world quite well. I look forward to seeing her in the adaptation of The Color Purple musical in December. It is also very nice to see a Disney princess and mythological creature portrayed as a person of color, and Disney and Rob Marshall deserve credit for her casting.

What Disney does not deserve credit for is the ableist rewriting of Howard Ashman’s lyrics. (Also the straightening of them, but more on that later.) In “Kiss the Girl” Lin-Manuel Miranda provides some “sanitized” words that stand out like a sore thumb, because apparently Disney executives correctly realized it was predatory to kiss a girl who can’t consent, but erroneously decided Ariel couldn’t consent because she can’t speak at that moment.

I’m very sorry to hear that executive at Disney are so out of touch with reality that they are unaware that sign language, gesturing, writing, and other forms of non-verbal communication exist. And that they seem to think that people who cannot speak are broken, inferior beings who can’t fall in love or express that. To make matters worse, Ursula erases Ariel’s memory so she doesn’t realize she needs to share true love’s kiss with Eric before three days or she reverts to a mermaid. For the supposed awareness around consent, that deviation from the original makes Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle’s forcing of the romance far more cringeworthy than anything in Ashman’s original lyrics.

As to why that deviation from the original film was added to a movie that mostly adheres to the original slavishly, I don’t know. It might be explained by the bloat that permeates the entire movie. Rob Marshall’s overriding attitude seemed to be “Why do something in two minutes, if you can do it in eight?” The only thing Ursula’s memory erasure does is add extra dialogue making the on-land romance between Ariel and Eric take longer.

At just over two hours, the movie is unquestionably too long. The first hour of it moves along passably, with “Under the Sea” being the one scene that doesn’t look like it was shot by a camera with a black nylon stocking over it. It is the best song in the score, and it deservedly won Menken and Ashman their first Oscar in 1990. Daveed Diggs was a fantastic choice to play Sebastian, and he delivers it beautifully. Marshall’s cutting to a school of dolphins for “down here all the fish is happy” was a bizarre choice, as the emphasis on the word “fish” with the imagery of dolphins took me right out of the song, but Diggs pulled me back in quickly, in spite of some other visual choices on Marshall’s part that make no sense.

Excuse me, but I need to get this out of the way.

THEY CUT THE BEST VERSE OF “POOR UNFORTUNATE SOULS!!!!!!!!” LIKE, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK WERE THEY THINKING WITH THAT??????

Okay, now on to the moment where the movie really began to derail. Melissa McCarthy is fine as Ursula. She’s no where near as menacing or flamboyantly queer as Pat Carroll’s Sea Witch was, but I really don’t think that’s her fault. Her first two scenes before her big number are almost verbatim quotes of Carroll’s lines, which pales for anyone who enjoyed Carroll’s delivery.

More problematically, Marshall’s odd visual choices really came to a head in “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” When Ursula sings “Now it’s happened once or twice, someone couldn’t pay the price” she shows two merfolk being punished in the animated film. Here she holds up eight skulls of merfolk, which is substantially more than once or twice. The relentlessly dark palette of the film is probably most offensive in this song, with the dark blue being punctuated by bursts of orange, which is so uninspired color-wise that it’s depressing.

Even more problematically, the missing verse is the one about communicating without words and saying women are better silent anyway. Apparently the filmmakers decided a villain giving villainous advice was a problem, so they stripped the villain of some of her most iconic lines, which contribute to “Poor Unfortunate Souls” being the best Disney villain song. (Yes, I will die on that hill. Don’t argue that with me.) The other problem with omitting that verse is that the lyric and dramatic foil that Ashman set up between “Poor Unfortunate Souls” and Ariel’s wish in “Part of Your World” is gone too.

Ariel sings, “Bet you on land they understand, bet they don’t reprimand their daughters.” When Ursula sings, “Yes, on land it’s much preferred for ladies not to say a word, after all, dear, what is idle prattle for?” it not only shows the Sea Witch is subverting Ariel’s dreams while pretending to answer them, but it also forms a dramatic development through the song lyrics. Cutting that was honestly unforgivable.

One of the best aspects of the Disney renaissance was the way almost all the villains resurrected the queer coding of the 1940s and ‘50s. Pat Carroll’s butch, drag queen-inspired Sea Witch, has obvious lesbian undertones, of which McCarthy’s Ursula only has a faint reminiscence. The new revelation that Ursula is King Triton’s sister contributes to the straightening of the character by making her an evil aunt of the protagonist and not the flamboyant outsider she was in the 1989 film. The makeup copies the animated character, so the queerness is still there minimally, but the desire to control and manipulate a young woman is gone along with the missing verse of the villain song. This Ursula is only a power-hungry witch willing to use her niece as a pawn; the predatory and sexual undertones are eradicated.

Releasing The Little Mermaid on the last weekend before Pride Month, with its cuts and alterations to the lyrics of an iconic gay song-writer who died from AIDS was certainly a choice. That his song-writing partner had to write new songs that drastically pale in comparison to the work that largely started the Disney renaissance adds insult to injury.

For the record, I will also die on the hill that Alan Menken has never partnered with a lyricist as great as Howard Ashman. Steven Schwartz came close, but everyone else Menken has worked with is a notable step down. Menken and Miranda have written three new songs for this version of The Little Mermaid. Eric’s solo, “Wild Uncharted Waters,” is fine, even if it garners a deserved eyeroll for its introduction of on-the-nose similarities between Eric and Ariel by making them both rebellious teenagers from their opposite sex parents.

“The Scuttlebutt” is a fifth-rate Hamilton remix and an affront to humanity that is so jarringly different from the rest of the score that it feels like a painful slap in the face reminding us that Ashman died and Miranda does not even have half of his talent.

Ariel has one new solo, “For the First Time,” which makes no freaking sense at all. I am willing to overlook giving Ariel a song after she loses her voice and is supposed to be mute until she breaks Ursula’s necklace, since she can obviously still think. However, the lyrics are all about adapting to life on land, how difficult it is to walk because of gravity, how hard it is to wear a corset, and how uncomfortable shoes are. I’m sorry, but if Ariel still thinks a fork is a dinglehopper and you use it to style your hair, how the hell does she know what gravity, corsets, and shoes are, and how could she be singing about them? It would be as if Eliza Doolittle, after mastering the speech inflections of a British lady, sang a song about attending a ball and how wonderful it was without ever having been to a ball.

“Part of Your World” was an I want song that was largely responsible for launching the Disney renaissance. “Under the Sea” cemented it as a fabulous show-stopper, and “Poor Unfortunate Souls” made a clichéd villain a menacing, three-dimensional character while giving representation to the LGBTQ+ community at the height of AIDS. Nowadays Disney is largely devoid of original ideas, and while their desperate cash grabs usually have enough great material from their source to be watchable, they’re a far cry from the original that many people loved.

For the record, I never loved The Little Mermaid. I adore the score and might argue it’s the best work Menken and Ashman did for Disney—it’s really close between that and Beauty and the Beast—but the absurd happy ending that contradicts Hans Christen Andersen’s tragic fairy tale of longing for unattainable love was a weak point for me as soon as I was aware of it. There was a brief moment in the 2023 Little Mermaid when I thought a quasi-tragic ending might actually occur. (If it had occurred, I’d have written a very different review.) Unfortunately, Disney is afraid to take any risks and do anything that would alter the products they built their name on.

Around half-way through this movie, I felt bad for Halle Bailey. She was cast as a Disney princess, gave it her very, very good all, only to be stuck in a lifeless cash grab that bastardized the best aspects of the original film. I even felt a little bad for Rob Marshall, because most of the lousy creative decisions obviously came from higher up executives.

Ultimately, I was angry and sad to watch an iconic queer-coded character neutered, to watch a famous gay lyricist have his lyrics likewise neutered, and to watch yet another bloated, soulless remake from Disney that neuters the story of a gay author writing about his forbidden love who married a woman leaving him alone. If Disney wants to neuter anything as a force for good, perhaps they could neuter the careers of racist and homophobic fascists like Ron DeSantis and Trump instead of churning out remakes like this.

Personal Recommendation: D

Dear Evan Hansen

Year of release: 2021       Directed by Stephen Chbosky.   Starring Ben Platt, Kaitlyn Dever, Amandla Stenberg, Colton Ryan, Amy Adams, and Julianne Moore.

Dear Alana Beck (as played by Amandla Stenberg),

I’m sorry you suffer from mental illness. It’s a bitch. Ask me how I know, or preferably, don’t. Despite one colossal mistake that this film glosses over, you also seem like the one character in a musical of half-developed sociopathic narcissists who actually has a touch of empathy and decency. I’m sorry you’re relegated to a supporting role for a massively unethical protagonist who regrettably shares my name. I would much rather have watched a musical about you.

You also sing “The Anonymous Ones,” which is the best song in Dear Evan Hansen. One major reason for that is it is the only song that works in context, showing support for all the people who suffer from mental illness in silence. I’m shocked to learn that it is a new song written for this film adaptation and not a part of the stage production. I guess I should take this moment to admit that I never saw the musical on stage. However, after seeing the film and reading the synopsis of the stage show, I’m glad I never got around to it, because as bad as this film is, the stage show sounds even worse.

The majority of songs are not bad on their own accord, divorced from the plot of the musical. However, in context, most of them are horrific. “For Forever” sounds like a beautiful ballad about friendship, but in reality, it is a callous and cruel deception. “You Will Be Found” is seemingly an inspirational power ballad, but the lie it is based on makes it jaw-droppingly cringeworthy and offensive. “Only Us” comes across as a love duet between two awkward teens afraid to share their emotions. However, it’s exploiting a suicide so a socially inept boy can get into his crush’s pants. It’s gross.

Writing a conditional love duet was something Rodgers and Hammerstein perfected in Carousel with “If I Loved You.” However, Carousel is a horror story about abuse and communal victim blaming (despite mediocre productions that play it as a straightforward romance—including but not limited to the atrocious film adaptation). It makes sense that the “love” is conditional. Dear Evan Hansen is a coming-of-age story about a mentally ill high schooler who makes one big mistake. It doesn’t seem to be anywhere on the film’s horizon that Evan is a sociopath or incapable of loving Zoe.

Given your own mental health struggles, your decision to befriend Evan Hansen (Ben Platt, reprising his Tony award-winning role from Broadway, despite clearly not being a teenager on film) makes perfect sense. It would seem you have found a kindred spirit. It stretches credibility a little bit that you just know Evan is on antidepressants, but that’s hardly a problem giving the other issues with this film. Your passion in founding the Connor Project to honor the memory of your deceased classmate is honorable and understandable. I’m sorry it was all based on an egregious lie.

There is something very important I have to say about suicide and threatening to commit suicide (which, for the record, comes from my therapist). Threatening to commit suicide, regardless of the extreme pain one is in, is inherently manipulative and narcissistic. Committing suicide and leaving a trail of grieving people to deal with the ramifications is an appallingly selfish act. That in no way belittles the intense pain and hopelessness that depression causes; it instead acknowledges the reality that depression is a horrific illness that harms more people than just the ones who suffer from it. Please note I do not think anyone who commits suicide is selfish; I’m describing what depression does.

Connor’s (Colton Ryan) decision to commit suicide is perfectly in keeping with his aggressive, bullying personality. As much as his mother (Amy Adams) wishes to deny that aspect of her son’s personality, there is no escaping that reality. Neither can Evan escape that reality, as he uses Connor’s suicide to weasel his way into the family he wishes he had.

While depression can make one lash out and behave in ways that they would otherwise think abominable, it is not an excuse for lying to people or treating them like shit. And that is what Evan Hansen does. To some extent, the musical realizes that, but when his mother (Julianne Moore) absolves him with “So Big/So Small” because of his anxiety, it’s obvious the film is too.

If that absolution isn’t disgusting enough, when Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever) asks to meet Evan at the film’s end, it is mercifully not a reuniting of the couple, but it is an unearned reconciliation between them. Zoe says she wishes they could have met for the first time then, because somehow that would have changed Evan’s many deceptions, but at the same time the film seems to be saying how wonderful it is that this healing came from Evan’s deceptions.

I firmly believe good, even great, things can come about as a result of terrible things. However, earnestly turning a teenage suicide into both a whitewashing of reality and into meaningless platitudes of everyone’s self-worth is not merely tasteless but offensive as well. It’s as if someone watched Heathers and decided that the ruthless satire would be better if replaced with mawkish sentimentality, because that would make the same portrayal of cliques and faux friendships so much more palatable. The brilliance of Heathers is that it pulls no punches in deconstructing the toxicity of cliques and phony appearances divorced from reality. Dear Evan Hansen takes many of the same scenarios and plays them straight, because glossing over the horror of what’s actually happening creates a false sense of a feel-goodness, which in turn creates a larger audience of fans who can deal with a serious subject while never having to feel uncomfortable.

As someone who suffers from severely debilitating depression, I wanted to scream at Evan several times: “That’s not how it works; that’s not how any of it works.” From his letters of bad advice to his cringeworthy speech in memory of Connor, none of this musical is inspiring or moving. As catchy as the songs are, their service to an appalling story makes them more off-putting than anything else.

The kindest thing I can say about Dear Evan Hansen is that it is full of good intentions. However, the old saying about the road paved with good intentions holds true here. If you really want to see a musical about the realities of depression handled with sensitivity and insight, we still have Next to Normal and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

Sincerely,

A musical lover and fellow anonymous one

Personal recommendation: D-

The Two Popes

Year of Release: 2019      Directed by Fernando Meirelles.  Staring Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins.

As Steven Greydanus noted in his review of The Two Popes, Roger Ebert’s Memoirs of a Geisha principle applies to this movie: the more you know about the subject the harder it is to overlook the glaring inaccuracies. Deacon Greydanus has done the heavy lifting regarding some of the more outrageous claims the movie puts forward about Benedict, so I see no need to repeat the rebuttal here other than to add a few points of my own.

The notion that Benedict, “God’s Rottweiler,” was an uptight conservative holding onto the worst elements of Catholicism and Francis is a progressive reformer who will guide the Church into the 21^st century is hardly original to this film. Still, it’s a preconception that gets on my nerves, partially because I think it’s very reasonable to argue that Francis is less progressive than Benedict XVI was, considering the countless times Benedict wrote about care for the environment, social justice, and was the pope who said democratic socialism is completely compatible with Catholicism.

However, since historical fiction has a valuable place and purpose—I really need to find time to write about why Amadeus is one of the greatest works of cinema, but that’s for another day—it’s worthwhile to accept the movie’s premise and review it on its own terms. I think it also fails as a work of historical fiction.

That failure is put into light partially by the most historically accurate parts: the flashbacks of a young Father Bergoglio (Juan Minujín) discerning his vocation, navigating the Argentine Dirty War as a bishop while trying to keep as many people alive as possible, and later passionately calling for economic justice. These scenes are some of the best of the movie and on their own make a compelling cinematic story of the first South American pope.

However, as promising as those scenes are, they are always followed by the fictitious meeting between Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) and Pope Benedict XVI (Anthony Hopkins) that forms the bulk of the narrative. While the notions of cross-examining and changing long-held beliefs are important and interesting, the portrayal always becomes overly simplistic with the mentality of Benedict = BAD and Francis = GOOD.

The hagiographical portrayal of Francis almost makes him seem above criticism. Screenwriter Anthony McCarten and director Fernando Meirelles work hard to refute the more scandalous claims that have been leveled against Francis, but Benedict gets no such treatment. The scenes of him playing the piano are nice, and the filmmakers respect his love of reading and scholarship, but compared to the treatment Francis gets, it’s akin to Benedict’s insufficient reforms regarding the sex abuse scandal: too little, too late.

Dramatically, that’s a problem, because it undermines the climax where both pontiffs admit their shortcomings and confess to one another, but from what we’ve seen only one of them has any real need to confess. Bergoglio essentially has an Oskar Schindler moment that he could have done better, which is not a sin per se.

The confession scene also briefly portrays Benedict as more heterodox than Francis. Randomly granting absolution at the end of a conversation in which someone admits they feel remorse is not a confession, and I personally know very orthodox Catholics who would be aghast at a priest doing such a thing without the ritual of the sacrament. After an entire film in which Benedict is a strict rules follower to have him reverse course that abruptly is ludicrous.

More problematic is Benedict’s confession. I’m willing to overlook that he confesses he knew about Marcial Maciel’s crimes and did nothing (John Paul II knew and did nothing; Benedict removed him from ministry), because there were plenty of other times Benedict handled the sex abuse in the Church badly and conflating Benedict with John Paul II in this scene works with the premise. However, the cut to Bergoglio’s reaction implies that he is going to be the perfect reformer who cleans house and fixes the sex abuse problem in the Church.

To quickly summarize the failures of the past three popes in that regard: John Paul II was in denial the sexual abuse was happening, Benedict put weak, insufficient reforms in place, and Francis seems to be under the misapprehension that it’s been taken care of and he can focus his energy on climate change and economic justice. Making Francis seem like he will correct Benedict’s failures in this regard seriously downplays the extent of the sexual abuse that has plagued the Church and still does.

As a thought experiment, if the film replaced Benedict XVI with John Paul II and Cardinal Bergoglio with Cardinal Ratzinger, I think it might be less inaccurate, at least regarding the retirement subplot and Ratzinger’s reluctance to be pope. I know inaccuracies in historical fiction are beside the point, but I think that highlights how committed the filmmakers are to the notion of Francis as reformer, even at the cost of consistent characterization or real reforms.

 

Personal recommendation: D

Cats

Year of Release: 2019      Directed by Tom Hooper.  Starring Jennifer Hudson, Judi Dench, Francesca Hayward, Idris Elba, Taylor Swift, Ian McKellen, Jason Derulo, James Corden, and Rebel Wilson.

To answer the most important question regarding Tom Hooper’s adaptation of Cats: does Jennifer Hudson have the vocal chops to pull off “Memory,” yes, she most emphatically does. Is it enough to save a train wreck of a movie that, with few exceptions, is a series of mind-bogglingly bad decisions? For that matter is “Memory” enough to save the show itself which is likewise a series of (less) bad decisions?

Before I brand myself as a hater of Cats the stage show, which is a more or less enjoyable two-plus-hour dance recital if you can accept it for that, let me sincerely say that it has several decent songs and the choreography is fun to watch. The songs I particularly enjoy from the show are “Memory,” “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats,” “Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat,” and “Macavity the Mystery Cat.” The song (yes, singular) that I enjoyed in this presentation was “Memory,” in spite of Hooper’s attempts to sabotage it.

Hudson lands the one big showstopper that’s far more difficult to sing well than most people give it credit for. Hooper then follows it with a reaction shot of two humans imitating cats that elicited deserved howls of laughter in my theater. If following the one earned moment of pathos in the movie with that wasn’t bad enough, Victoria (Francesca Hayward) then sings the desperate Oscar attempt for best original song, cowritten by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Taylor Swift: “Beautiful Ghosts.” It’s the equivalent of a figure skater nailing the triple axel and then twice falling flat on her face while trying to turn around at the end of the rink.

I understand that the truncated act I version of “Memory” is followed with the full version of “Beautiful Ghosts,” so following the full version of “Memory” with a shorter reprise of “Beautiful Ghosts” could make structural sense. This ignores several important points. First, “Beautiful Ghosts” is lyrically a watered-down version of “Memory.” No musical needs to a new song to repeat the emotions of the song immediately preceding it. Second, “Beautiful Ghosts” stands out structurally and musically like a sore thumb from the rest of the score. Finally, it’s an okay song at best, so placing it next to the most famous song in the show is a particularly bad idea.

Speaking of bad ideas, possibly the worst one plaguing this movie is the decision that the paper-thin plot tacked onto the original needed more explanation. As a result, ridiculous and redundant expository dialogue has been introduced to the originally completely sung musical, explaining at the end of the Jellicle Ball, one cat, chosen by Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench), gets to go to the Heavyside Layer to be reborn. A seven-year old could have told you that from watching the stage show without it being explained to them, but apparently Hooper and screenwriter Lee Hall think the average movie goer in 2019 is less intelligent than the average seven-year-old. It doesn’t make the plot more sensical—that’s not possible—it just makes the stupidity of it more apparent.

Even more mind-numbingly, all of this is being explained to Victoria, the youngest and newest cat attending her first Jellicle ball. In the stage show, the performing cats break the fourth wall, addressing the non-feline audience to explain the “Naming of Cats” and who the various cats are. It makes no sense at all that this needs to be explained to a cat, an animal with one of the best instincts. Inconsistently, the movie also doesn’t entirely abandon the fourth-wall breaking. For the final number, “The Addressing of Cats,” Old Deuteronomy looks right at the camera, presumably forgetting about the audience-surrogate Victoria standing right next to her. Or maybe it’s because Victoria has now become a Jellice cat, which is the one unexplained aspect of the stage show that the movie insists on keeping a mystery.

I’ve been negative long enough. Francesca Hayward is a very good dancer and singer, and from the little bit she has to act, presumably a good actress too, knowing how to emote with her body and eyes. Ian McKellen’s 110% commitment to mimicking a cat is more enjoyable than almost anything else in the movie, and of course there’s Hudson. Taylor Swift is also in the movie, and she performs “Macavity the Mystery Cat” with surprising skill, even if her breathy singing style doesn’t quite have the aggressive edge the song needs.

As a groupie of Macavity (Idris Elba, playing a smaller version of Shere Khan), it’s weird that Swift’s Bombalurina is the only female feline to have a noticeably not-flat chest, which the camera creepily draws attention to. If I wanted to think about this movie more than I do, I might say it’s an example of slut-shaming by making the most sinister female cat the only sexual one, as contrasted with Jason Derulo’s flirtatious Rum Tum Tugger. But I really don’t want to think about it that much. I especially don’t want to think about Rebel Wilson in a CGI fat cat suit spreading her legs and scratching the inside of her upper thighs, but bad ideas plague this movie in truly incredible ways. However, writing those sentences back to back just made me realize that when this movie focuses on cat bodies, or human ones thanks to CGI cat fur, the focus is almost always female and always unflattering.

I haven’t even talked about Hooper’s bad camera choices here. He apparently learned the lesson from his dumb single-take song idea for Les Misérables, but he’s overcorrected, cutting so frequently that, for the most part, we barely get to see the dances. Steven McRae’s tap dancing as Skimbleshanks is one of the few nice exceptions, even though Andrew Lloyd Webber decided the song need to be updated, cutting the bridge and re-orchestrating it, as he does to the detriment of several songs, such as “The Old Gumby Cat” and “The Addressing of Cats,” although the latter may have been because Judi Dench doesn’t have the voice to sing its enormous range.

I also need to mention the human faces on the mice and cockroaches that Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) keeps in line and occasionally swallows whole. Since the entire set was designed for human-sized cats, shouldn’t mice and cockroaches be proportionately larger than they are in real life, and not the same size? It’s a strange disconnect, much like the shots of human cats crawling on all fours and then randomly deciding to walk on two legs that plague most of “Jellicle Songs for Jellice Cats,” but clearly not something that mattered to anyone making Cats or anyone who will enjoy it, which can probably be said about most of this movie.

 

Personal recommendation: D+

My Cousin Rachel

Year of release: 2017              Directed by Roger Michell.                Starring Sam Claflin, Rachel Weisz, Iain Glen, Holliday Grainger, and Pierfrancesco Favino.

Compare and contrast the following sentences. “They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days.” “Did she; or didn’t she? Who’s to blame?” One of them is the opening to a masterpiece of 20th century literature, which brilliantly sets the stage for a world balanced between beauty and menace with an aura of perpetual ambiguity, wracked by guilt, inner torment, and memories. The other is the opening line of a film adapted from the Wikipedia summary of the same novel.

I will say right now, that on a technical level, this adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel is not a bad film. A couple clumsy edits aside, the cinematography is (mostly) gorgeous, the production design is exquisite, the acting is competent, and the directing passable. None of that makes up for the utter ruination of the novel, which as full disclosure, is one of my three favorite books.

The problems begin with the vapid opening line, which heavy-handedly suggests the conclusion of the story rather than introducing us to Philip (Sam Claflin) and giving us a background to make him sympathetic even as he makes reckless decisions throughout the course of the story. That background, which takes nearly eighty pages in the novel, is bull dozed through in about ten minutes as a prologue before the title card. That pacing barely relents for the remainder of the film.

We see throughout the film that Philip is a rash imprudent man, but since the film races through the story with equal recklessness, we never learn why. Thus we never understand the full tragedy or motivation behind his often conflicting actions.

We learn Philip was orphaned as a young boy, and his wealthy older cousin Ambrose took him in, despite the church ladies insisting a young boy needs to grow up around a woman, which is a hurried way of acknowledging Philip’s sexism and difficulty in relating to women. We do not see any of Philip’s fond or troubled memories with Ambrose that we do in the book, and the film completely omits the crucial detail that Philip worshiped Ambrose, embodying both his virtues and his faults.

The film then rushes to its next plot point to check off: Ambrose fell ill and went to Italy to recover. There, despite his self-affirmed perpetual bachelorhood, he fell in love with Rachel (Rachel Weisz) and married her. Then, Ambrose wrote one more letter to England in which he implored Philip to save him from Rachel who was poisoning him. Philip set out for Italy immediately, consumed with hatred for his murderous witch of a cousin, only to learn Ambrose had died of a brain tumor that made him paranoid and irrational.

Shortly afterwards Rachel comes to England to meet Philip, and when he sees her, his resentment instantly melts. In the scene where they first meet, Weisz embodies du Maurier’s title character so perfectly, that for a brief moment, I was almost swept away along with Philip and tempted to forgive the film its faults, but then it went and butchered her most crucial scenes by rushing through them, which undermined the gravity of Philip’s former antagonism.

The biggest problem with this film is that it seems to think that fidelity to the novel merely consists of hitting all the major plot points. With that it fundamentally misunderstands Daphne du Maurier. No one reads a du Maurier novel primarily for its plot. The biggest weakness of her breakthrough novel Jamaica Inn is the thin and kind of predictable plot. Nonetheless, that novel was successful because of its foreboding atmosphere, generating sympathy for its conflicted protagonist thrown into unethical situations against her will, and because of the way it powerfully painted the Cornish countryside as simultaneously dangerous and liberating. Foreboding atmosphere, morally compromised yet sympathetic protagonists, and a love for the Cornish countryside by the sea are the three things that made du Maurier the great writer she was. This film is interested in none of them.

It needs to be mentioned that Philip’s relationship with Louise (Holliday Grainger), the daughter of his godfather and estate manager Mr. Kendall (Iain Glen), and her unreturned affection for him is also glazed over, which makes her presence at later climactic scenes irrelevant. More damningly, it makes the film’s coda, which is not in the book, appalling not only for the way it downplays the horror of the story, but also for its sexist treatment of Louise and exoneration of Philip.

The greatest strength of du Maurier’s novel My Cousin Rachel is the perpetual ambiguity that hangs over the story. Did Rachel murder Ambrose, or did he have a brain tumor? Is she just careless with money, or is she hiding dark secrets for which she needs money? And finally, is she plotting to murder Philip, or not? The film takes very clear sides, so clear that the attempt to turn the tables is completely unbelievable. In stark contrast, the book builds its atmosphere of horror and tragedy by constantly allowing the reader to second guess himself. That sort of subtlety is as foreign to the film as Rachel’s mysterious Italian friend Rainaldi (Pierfrancesco Favino) is to England.

The last half hour of my screening was permeated with snickering from the audience. I could hardly blame them; the plot points which made sense in the novel, considering the guilt and uncertainty plaguing Philip, seemed ludicrous here with the film’s one sided approach to the central conflict. If there ever was an example of how to ruin a piece of source material while adhering to its major plot points, this would be it.

There will be worse movies I see this year; there have already been worse movies released. There will be none that I hate more than My Cousin Rachel.

 

Personal Recommendation: D-

Content advisory: Two non-graphic sexual encounters, an anachronistic obscenity, and a mild aura of menace.                 MPAA rating: PG-13

Suggested Audience: Teens and up.