Basic bonding
Mark Steyn
Around the Bend 12A, selected cinemas
Somebody’s obviously selling MakeYour-Own-Film-School-Type-Movie kits. If you made a western or cop caper or musical comedy as obvious as Around the Bend, they’d jeer it as formulaic hackery. But fortunately for writer-director Jordan Roberts he’s mining a seam that comes swathed in a layer of Super-Protective Male Sensitivity. That makes it sound like an extra-ribbed condom, except that in this case there’s nothing underneath. Roberts’s film falls into that alarmingly growing niche genre: the male-bonding movie.
Who came up with the notion of chick flicks for guys? Was it a typing error? Did someone at the studio fire off an email saying, ‘Have you seen the new James bond?’, and get a reply enthusing about what a brilliant idea it was? The chick flick for guys invariably features fellows who’ve lived a lot — lot of women, lot of drink, a little shooting, a little jail... Unfortunately, they’ve done it all before the movie starts, so on screen what they mainly do is resolve their issues, at length.
For your basic bonding, you can’t beat the old father–son thing. Better yet, make it tri-generational: the gram’pa and grandson get on famously, on the old theenemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend principle, and eventually they bring the third man on board. Around the Bend goes one better: the first four-generational male bonding pic! No one’s ever pulled that off before: it’s the Dionne quins of male chick flicks. There’s aging patriarch Henry (Michael Caine), Henry’s son Turner (Christopher Walken), Turner’s son Jason (Josh Lucas), and Jason’s son Zach (Jonah Bobo). Henry is a bit of a character — and not just because, even when Sir Michael’s doing his best American accent, the rhythm comes out cockney. He’s dying from some unspecified fatal movie disease, but, whatever it is (cockney vowel syndrome?), it doesn’t prevent him getting, so he tells us, ‘a woody’ from the Danish nurse. Don’t worry, it’s not that kind of Danish-nurse picture, though Glenne Headly’s accent is your basic ‘Ja, ja, this pipphole bra rilly suits me, don’t you think?’ Seventies Europorn.
After the Norwegian wood from the Danish pastry, Michael Caine’s son Christopher Walken drops in for the first time in several decades. What’s he been up to? Whoa, hold up, we can’t give away all the dark family secrets this early. The great-grandson is thrilled to meet his gram’pa, impressed by the way he’s come back from the dead. But the grandson isn’t as thrilled by the return of his father. While the others celebrate with a big blowout at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Jason is sullen and stand-offish. He works in a bank, you see. That’s always a giveaway, isn’t it? Sure sign he’s Mister Uptight, can’t bond, can’t hug. Such a disappointment to his drug-addled jailbird dad. And to his grandpa, too: ‘I don’t think Henry ever cared for you working in that bank,’ he’s told.
Jason walks with a limp. Hmm. Wonder if there’s a reason for that? And, if so, wonder if we’ll hear it before the end of the picture? That’s the trouble with this film: it’s like one of those ballroom-dancing lessons with the footprints painted on the floor. Jordan Roberts has placed all the foot marks across the room and hits them in the right order but the film never takes off and waltzes around free of the floor plan. Despite its title, Around the Bend has no dangerous curves: it’s straight ahead, and you can see everything coming from five miles away, not least because the characters don’t so much talk to each other as provide a running commentary on what’s going on: ‘A family carries each other,’ Michael Caine tells Josh Lucas when Josh is antipathetic to Christopher Walken. ‘I carried you. You carried me. We have to carry him.’ It takes a big man to carry off a line like that, but fortunately Michael Caine is the carrying kind.
A couple of American critics attempted to argue that, okay, it’s a conveyor belt of clichés but the calibre of the actors and their extraordinary performances make it totally compelling. Oh, come off it. Even if you forgive the requirements of the genre — the fact that Jason is bound to weaken, warm to his father, first with a momentary rueful smile and eventually with full-blown protracted hugging — even if you accept that as an inviolable opera-type convention, wouldn’t it help if Josh Lucas were less obviously such a sensitive fellow from the word go? Even as the designated squaresville who works in the bank, he looks like he’s just bustin’ to hug and bond from the word go.
En route to the big finale, Roberts fills things out with a lot of self-conscious quirkiness, beginning with a jingly David Baerwald score that excessively underlines everything. Character traits seem to have been parcelled out randomly: the Danish nurse likes horror movies, Michael Caine adores Kentucky Fried Chicken — and sets the others off on a quest through the American south-west stopping at every KFC en route. But, despite big sky and big landscapes, the film itself shrivels as it goes. If you make a war movie or a musical that’s totally generic, it’s still about a war or it’s still got a 15-minute full-chorus production number in it. But to make an intensely personal movie that’s totally generic is pointless on every level. Pick up any newspaper: it’s an exciting time, tons of big stories out there, but apparently none of them’s worth making a movie about.
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