Cyrano: Love's labours lost

Cyrano (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for strong violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 2.25.22

We’ve seen two noteworthy big-screen versions of Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play up to now: José Ferrer’s Oscar-winning turn in director Michael Gordon’s modest 1950 American translation; and Gérard Depardieu’s robust, Oscar-nominated work in director Jean-Paul Rappeneau’s far more lavish 1990 French adaptation.

 

Cyrano (Peter Dinklage) has long loved Roxanne (Haley Bennett) from afar, but kept
silent out of the fear that she'd find his worship comical or insulting. She, in turn,
has eyes only for a new King's Guard recruit glimpsed briefly in a crowd.

Nor should we overlook star/scripter Steve Martin’s kinder, gentler rendition in 1987’s Roxanne. (Which is to say, nobody dies.)

Director Joe Wright’s Cyrano is adapted from Erica Schmidt’s new 2018 stage musical, with Peter Dinklage and Haley Bennett reprising their starring roles; Schmidt also handles the script. And while Rostand’s story seems an unlikely candidate for musical resurrection, the same could have been said of (among others) Les Miz and Evita … and “unlikely” certainly didn’t damage their popularity.

 

That said, this Cyrano is an awkward beast. Many of Aaron and Bryce Dessner’s songs aren’t memorable, and several interrupt/interfere with the on-screen action in the manner of all clumsy musicals.

 

On the positive side, Dinklage owns this film; his performance is a masterpiece of carefully nuanced expressions and body language. He puts heart and soul into even the most trivial of lines, and his frequent displays of silent, earnest anguish — it’s that sort of story — are heartbreaking.

 

Bennett’s work is similarly charismatic, albeit on a different level. Her Roxanne shimmers with giddy, joyous delight at everything she encounters: most particularly when she swoons over her desire to be swept away by passionate, soul-deep love.

 

Wright’s touch, with the accomplished assistance of frequent cinematographer colleague Seamus McGarvey, is stunning. All of their visual tricks are in evidence: the sliding walls and lengthy tracking shots; the arresting framing of scenes and characters; and the expansive, ethereal depiction of war. (Think back to their work on 2007’s Atonement.)

 

When things work here, they work extraordinarily well.

 

Unfortunately, that doesn’t happen often enough.

 

The setting is Paris, the year 1640. Roxanne attends a stage performance in a theater hosting an audience that ranges from the cream of Parisian society to thieves, pickpockets and cutpurses. She’s escorted by the powerful Duke De Guiche (Ben Mendelsohn), who craves her in a way that is slimy from his first words; rashly heedless of this, Roxanne flirts as a means of enjoying his wealth and status, while having no intention of marrying him.

 

She chances to lock eyes with newly arrived King’s Guard recruit Christian (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), buried within the rabble-rousing theatergoers. The connection is instant and electric, but he’s swept away by the crowd.

Snatched: Send it back

Snatched (2017) • View trailer 
Two stars. Rated R, for profanity, crude humor and fleeting nudity
By Derrick Bang

It’s pretty sad when the star of a film is overwhelmed and out-funnied by her co-stars, and that’s definitely the case with Snatched.

On the run and lost in the Amazonian jungle, with a vengeful kidnapper on their trail,
Emily (Amy Schumer, left) and her mother Linda (Goldie Hawn) haven't the faintest idea
what to do next. Neither do this tawdry flick's director or writer.

Amy Schumer is by far the weakest link. Goldie Hawn, as her mother Linda, is funnier. Bashir Salahuddin, as a desk-bound U.S. State Department clerk, is much funnier. Joan Cusack, as a retired special ops agent, darn near steals the show ... and she doesn’t speak a word.

Mind you, Hawn, Salahuddin, Cusack and a few others are tiny bits of spice in very thin gruel. It’s hard to believe that Katie Dippold got paid for this miserable excuse for a script, particularly since it sounds like Schumer ad-libbed all of her dialog (scarcely an improvement). But, then, Dippold’s previous big-screen solo credit was 2013’s execrable The Heat, so clearly we shouldn’t have expected better.

Dippold seems to have become the go-to scripter for today’s two hottest foul-mouthed female comics, which makes sense; in terms of their big-screen personas, Schumer is basically a smuttier version of Melissa McCarthy (which is saying quite a lot). Schumer hasn’t yet met a situation that she couldn’t debase with a vulgar reference to sexual or bodily functions, and hey: If crude, tasteless potty humor is your cup of tea, you’re bound to have a good time with this flick.

Not that it features much else that could be considered entertainment value.

Schumer stars as Emily Middleton, a useless semi-adult introduced as she’s dumped by her musician boyfriend. Concerned less about her derailed love life and more about her two non-refundable tickets to an Ecuadorian tourist trap, Emily rattles unsuccessfully through her meager list of friends, and finally — as sloppy sixths or sevenths — persuades her mother to come along.

Such a trip is far outside Linda’s comfort zone, she being the type of stay-at-home, overly protective single mother whose idea of excitement is a pottery class. But Emily prevails, and the two unattached gals are off to paradise.