Chris Knipp
06-08-2005, 03:20 AM
RON HOWARD'S CINDERELLA MAN: A REVIEW
BY CHRIS KNIPP
Exemplary mediocrity ain't such a bad thing
I have considered myself an opponent of Ron Howard's approach to filmmaking ever since I saw Beautiful Mind and found it manipulative, fake, and driven by false romantic assumptions about genius and madness. Worse yet, there was the sheer skill and conviction, the demonstrated ability to make millions lap up what Howard dealt out and call it a great movie. Nonetheless I thought this might be a better one and it is -- at least in the sense of being a well made conventional boxing picture -- though I don't see quite why we need another one so soon after Million Dollar Baby -- and in the sense of having engaged my attention and, occasionally, my emotions, without leaving me seething with rage. I may have to modify my anti-Howard position, especially since I now realize I've seen only four of Howard's 28 directorial efforts. With that limited exposure, I can't, strictly speaking, have an educated opinion about his work as a whole. I have some educated guesses -- following the principle of "You need not eat all of an egg to know that it is bad," modified to read, "You need not eat all of an egg to know that it is mediocre" (see below). But I'm becoming ambivalent. Mediocrity means striking a kind of balance. After all, the original Latin for "the golden mean" was "aurea mediocritas."
Cinderella Man -- the phrase is one that was bandied about by contemporary journalists chronicling the triumphal concluding phase of James Braddock's seven-year period of boxing failure, Depression hard times, and meteoric rise to the heavyweight championship -- is a conventional underdog success story, but it's arguably as well done as such a little epic of feel-good courage could be at this questionable time in American history. Not surprisingly, the cast had to be headed up by a New Zealander. The movie's steeped in period flavor which only rarely feels fake: there's a bit too much artificial snow, and the period cars as usual are too shiny, but the clothes are good and the people look right. Russell Crowe himself has a face that fits very well into the sallow, downtrodden look of the Depression. I love the fleshy Irish boxing commissioner: I didn't know faces of such wonderfully glossy period smugness still existed on living actors' bodies: he's like a big, fleshier, venial FDR. Russell Crowe as Braddock and Paul Giamatti as his trainer (the character being an amalgam of the actual manager and trainer) are impeccable. Or not very peccable. Giamatti is odd, thinner-voiced and more delicate than you'd expect a denizen of the ring to be, but that in itself makes one inclined to think him more like the real thing than any usual movie version. And one just wants Giamatti, who has himself risen meteorically through American Splendor and Sideways, to show us he can play somebody neither whiney nor weird. Renée Zellweger, whom Hollywood loves to see as the plucky little lady, delivers the only slightly nauseating lines in the piece in her conventional role as Mrs. Braddock, but at least this isn't another of her embarrassing efforts to be elegant or busty. As the flashy villain Max Baer, who must be brought down, Craig Bierko makes the transition from grinning playboy to scowling mauler with surprising ease.
In looks this is meant to evoke the black and white movie, in color. Its sweaty conflicts may have more in common with Raging Bull than Ali. But this movie isn't about a life, it's about a Depression hero, and the important scenes are of Braddock's family and work struggles, his pitiful decommissioning after a failed fight with a broken hand, entered only because of financial desperation; his struggle to find work on the docks and keep his family together with the gas and electricity cut off. Most of his history before is skipped over, and his life after is filled in only in concluding titles. What matters is the honesty, pride, and goodness of the man, teaching his boy you can't steal a sausage even when you're starving, returning all his public assistance money when he's been allowed to fight again and wins a big purse, never insulting a rival. It's also central that he took the championship from the brutal but glamorous Baer, in a moment that crystallizes his identity as Cinderella Man -- as the Depression poor's comeback kid, a boxer whose personal story gives hope to the masses. The scene when he walks out to the ring to be met by 35,000 silent, presumably adoring, fans is one of the most effective of Howard's usual numerous efforts to put a lump in the throat. A snappier moment is when Braddock's sent to dine in a posh hotel by the commissioner just prior to the fight with Baer, and Baer comes in in evening clothes with diamond-studded dames in tow. He insults Braddock and Mrs. B. throws a glass of water in his face. "You have your wife doing your fighting for you now!" Baer quips. "Isn't she somethin'?" he rejoins. The effort to contrast flashy style with modest integrity is quite effective.
Another good -- and visually memorable -- scene comes when Mrs. Braddock comes to berate manager/trainer Gold for getting her husband back into boxing, and discovers him sitting with his wife in their elegant apartment -- almost completely devoid of furniture, the last pieces just having sold yesterday: he too is a Depression victim. From a World of Interiors viewpoint at least this is classy filmmaking, though Mrs. Gold's little homily, something about all the men feeling to blame for their failures, "but it's just the times," is another slightly nauseating moment.
I can't say really where Cinderella Man takes off from or transcends the conventions of the boxing movie. Rosenbaum in his thumbnail review calls Howard "an exemplar of mediocrity." I take this as favorable; that it means Howard's mediocrity is so exemplary it transcends its own ordinariness. This movie reminded me of Seabiscuit, another conventional effort that works, and another symbolic Depression come-from-behind success story -- though the horseracing details of that one engaged me more, personally, than the boxing details of this one, and I got more tears and joy from the Triple Crown than I ever do from any rise to the heavyweight championship. Among recent mainstream American fight pictures Ali is more grand, its subject more complex and accomplished, Will Smith the astonishingly spirited and able recreator of the wonderful personality, the cadences of the voice, and even of the light-footed boxing technique. And Million Dollar Baby has more minimalist power: Eastwood doesn't need a Depression to show how down at the heels the boxing life can be. But if you like the nitty gritty black and white boxing movie style and don't mind having an "exemplar of mediocrity" reproducing it, Cinderella Man is your stuff. Mediocrity never felt solider, stronger, or nicer. Only a small dose of Dramamine required.
Posted on Chris Knipp website (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=421)
BY CHRIS KNIPP
Exemplary mediocrity ain't such a bad thing
I have considered myself an opponent of Ron Howard's approach to filmmaking ever since I saw Beautiful Mind and found it manipulative, fake, and driven by false romantic assumptions about genius and madness. Worse yet, there was the sheer skill and conviction, the demonstrated ability to make millions lap up what Howard dealt out and call it a great movie. Nonetheless I thought this might be a better one and it is -- at least in the sense of being a well made conventional boxing picture -- though I don't see quite why we need another one so soon after Million Dollar Baby -- and in the sense of having engaged my attention and, occasionally, my emotions, without leaving me seething with rage. I may have to modify my anti-Howard position, especially since I now realize I've seen only four of Howard's 28 directorial efforts. With that limited exposure, I can't, strictly speaking, have an educated opinion about his work as a whole. I have some educated guesses -- following the principle of "You need not eat all of an egg to know that it is bad," modified to read, "You need not eat all of an egg to know that it is mediocre" (see below). But I'm becoming ambivalent. Mediocrity means striking a kind of balance. After all, the original Latin for "the golden mean" was "aurea mediocritas."
Cinderella Man -- the phrase is one that was bandied about by contemporary journalists chronicling the triumphal concluding phase of James Braddock's seven-year period of boxing failure, Depression hard times, and meteoric rise to the heavyweight championship -- is a conventional underdog success story, but it's arguably as well done as such a little epic of feel-good courage could be at this questionable time in American history. Not surprisingly, the cast had to be headed up by a New Zealander. The movie's steeped in period flavor which only rarely feels fake: there's a bit too much artificial snow, and the period cars as usual are too shiny, but the clothes are good and the people look right. Russell Crowe himself has a face that fits very well into the sallow, downtrodden look of the Depression. I love the fleshy Irish boxing commissioner: I didn't know faces of such wonderfully glossy period smugness still existed on living actors' bodies: he's like a big, fleshier, venial FDR. Russell Crowe as Braddock and Paul Giamatti as his trainer (the character being an amalgam of the actual manager and trainer) are impeccable. Or not very peccable. Giamatti is odd, thinner-voiced and more delicate than you'd expect a denizen of the ring to be, but that in itself makes one inclined to think him more like the real thing than any usual movie version. And one just wants Giamatti, who has himself risen meteorically through American Splendor and Sideways, to show us he can play somebody neither whiney nor weird. Renée Zellweger, whom Hollywood loves to see as the plucky little lady, delivers the only slightly nauseating lines in the piece in her conventional role as Mrs. Braddock, but at least this isn't another of her embarrassing efforts to be elegant or busty. As the flashy villain Max Baer, who must be brought down, Craig Bierko makes the transition from grinning playboy to scowling mauler with surprising ease.
In looks this is meant to evoke the black and white movie, in color. Its sweaty conflicts may have more in common with Raging Bull than Ali. But this movie isn't about a life, it's about a Depression hero, and the important scenes are of Braddock's family and work struggles, his pitiful decommissioning after a failed fight with a broken hand, entered only because of financial desperation; his struggle to find work on the docks and keep his family together with the gas and electricity cut off. Most of his history before is skipped over, and his life after is filled in only in concluding titles. What matters is the honesty, pride, and goodness of the man, teaching his boy you can't steal a sausage even when you're starving, returning all his public assistance money when he's been allowed to fight again and wins a big purse, never insulting a rival. It's also central that he took the championship from the brutal but glamorous Baer, in a moment that crystallizes his identity as Cinderella Man -- as the Depression poor's comeback kid, a boxer whose personal story gives hope to the masses. The scene when he walks out to the ring to be met by 35,000 silent, presumably adoring, fans is one of the most effective of Howard's usual numerous efforts to put a lump in the throat. A snappier moment is when Braddock's sent to dine in a posh hotel by the commissioner just prior to the fight with Baer, and Baer comes in in evening clothes with diamond-studded dames in tow. He insults Braddock and Mrs. B. throws a glass of water in his face. "You have your wife doing your fighting for you now!" Baer quips. "Isn't she somethin'?" he rejoins. The effort to contrast flashy style with modest integrity is quite effective.
Another good -- and visually memorable -- scene comes when Mrs. Braddock comes to berate manager/trainer Gold for getting her husband back into boxing, and discovers him sitting with his wife in their elegant apartment -- almost completely devoid of furniture, the last pieces just having sold yesterday: he too is a Depression victim. From a World of Interiors viewpoint at least this is classy filmmaking, though Mrs. Gold's little homily, something about all the men feeling to blame for their failures, "but it's just the times," is another slightly nauseating moment.
I can't say really where Cinderella Man takes off from or transcends the conventions of the boxing movie. Rosenbaum in his thumbnail review calls Howard "an exemplar of mediocrity." I take this as favorable; that it means Howard's mediocrity is so exemplary it transcends its own ordinariness. This movie reminded me of Seabiscuit, another conventional effort that works, and another symbolic Depression come-from-behind success story -- though the horseracing details of that one engaged me more, personally, than the boxing details of this one, and I got more tears and joy from the Triple Crown than I ever do from any rise to the heavyweight championship. Among recent mainstream American fight pictures Ali is more grand, its subject more complex and accomplished, Will Smith the astonishingly spirited and able recreator of the wonderful personality, the cadences of the voice, and even of the light-footed boxing technique. And Million Dollar Baby has more minimalist power: Eastwood doesn't need a Depression to show how down at the heels the boxing life can be. But if you like the nitty gritty black and white boxing movie style and don't mind having an "exemplar of mediocrity" reproducing it, Cinderella Man is your stuff. Mediocrity never felt solider, stronger, or nicer. Only a small dose of Dramamine required.
Posted on Chris Knipp website (http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=421)