Review: "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"

Once in a blue moon, Joel and Ethan Coen will deliver a picture that is far more stimulating on the screen, in a purely visual sense, than on the page. A film like The Man Who Wasn’t There, for instance, was less a triumph in screenwriting than a brooding feast for the eyes, made all the more captivating by Billy Bob Thornton’s masterful leading turn.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs marks one of these instances, except it lacks a performance on Thornton’s level. It’s a western anthology and, like so many anthology pictures, is a mixed bag, its half dozen chapters ranging from droll and delightful to uninspired and anti-climatic. The lone bright spot that lingers throughout the proceedings is how drop dead gorgeous it all is, Bruno Delbonnel’s photography richly deserving of Oscar consideration.

The film’s six stories are presented through an ancient book, titled The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Other Tales of the American Frontier.

Kicking off the series is, well, “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” a chapter equal parts funny and gruesome as the title character (Tim Blake Nelson), an outlaw cowboy, sings and shoots his way through the glorious Monument Valley. Nelson’s buoyant turn is irresistible stuff, so it’s a shame the entry flies by in no time. Likewise, the second story, “Near Algodones,” is terrific but fleeting. It features James Franco as a bank-robbing cowboy but it’s Stephen Root, as the plenty prepared bank teller, who steals the show.

“Meal Ticket” has heaps of promise but, despite a intriguing turn from Harry Melling, never takes off as it should. It sports Liam Neeson as a struggling impresario who travels from town to town with his performer Harrison (Melling), a limbless man who recites classic works of poetry and literature. As Harrison increasingly proves less of a draw, the producer must consider alternative talents to support a living. It’s a fine concept that isn’t sufficiently fleshed out.

The very best story comes next - it’s the prettiest (like, jaw-droppingly splendid) and most absorbing and expertly performed. “All Gold Canyon” is centered on an old prospector (Tom Waits) on the hunt for gold in a magnificent mountain valley. Through tireless work and determination, he finds precisely what he was looking for…and don’t you dare try robbing him of his findings.

The fifth story, “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” is headlined by Zoe Kazan, portraying Alice, a young woman venturing across the prairie to Oregon with her brother (Jefferson Mays). When he dies, she decides to continue on westward and becomes close to the wagon train leaders (Bill Heck and Grainger Hines) in the process. If Kazan rings too contemporary to quite convince in her role, Hines is pitch-perfect as the seasoned Mr. Arthur.

Last and least is “The Mortal Remains,” a chatty tale about a quintet of stagecoach travelers (Tyne Daly, Brendan Gleeson, Saul Rubinek, Jongo O’Neill and Chelcie Ross) en route to a mysterious destination. The novelty of seeing Daly, per usual giving it her all, in a semi-major motion picture isn’t enough to much lift this uninvolving dud.

In the end, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs emerges more a haphazard curiosity than anything close to top-tier Coens. It is a must-see for Waits fans and sure is a pretty picture but otherwise - mark this down as one of the more disappointing efforts of 2018.

B-

Review: "Boy Erased"

Boy Erased has all of the ingredients of a Best Picture Oscar winner, including three of the most devastating performances to this year grace the screen. What it ultimately lacks, holding it back from reaching masterpiece territory, is the right filmmaker to get it across the finish line.

This isn’t to completely lambaste the picture’s writer-director-actor-producer Joel Edgerton, who in the past has proven himself a marvelous talent both in front of (in It Comes at Night and Loving, among others) and behind (with The Gift) the camera. Edgerton here delivers a very fine film, albeit a frustratingly workmanlike effort that leans heavily on its actors and source material. It’s an endeavor that finds Edgerton an immense talent at getting the best out of his actors, while sporting very little visual flair himself as a filmmaker.

The film, based on Garrard Conley’s eponymous 2016 memoir, follows Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges, yet again proving himself one of today’s finest young actors), the son of Baptist parents (Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman), who, upon revealing his homosexuality to them, reluctantly agrees to enroll in a gay conversion therapy camp. There, Jared befriends other participants, each struggling to navigate and survive their way through this hellish experience. The program is spearheaded by “therapist” Victor Sykes (Edgerton), whose conversion methods are equal parts manipulative, traumatizing and sadistic.

Boy Erased is at its most compelling when focused on the family dynamic, with Hedges, Crowe and Kidman having an absorbing, all too convincing rapport that often rings of Ordinary People. Each actor is turning in some of their very best work, perhaps Crowe in particular, who absolutely kills it in his final scene toward the picture’s end. There’s also a terrific cameo from the always fabulous Cherry Jones, portraying the family physician, none too sold on Jared entering the program.

Less stirring are the camp scenes, with Edgerton too muted as the ringleader to pack the necessary punch. There are, however, very affecting scenes around the lead-up to Jared’s coming-out, including a shattering sequence involving classmate Henry (Joe Alwyn). Constantly jumping back and forth between past and present, and compellingly so, Edgerton’s screenplay is a greater success than his direction, which veers from the uninspired to the heavy-handed.

My qualms with some of Edgerton’s contributions aside, Boy Erased remains a mostly riveting production, with its trio of stars in pitch-perfect form. I just wish I could give the film these masterful performances grace a tad higher grade than…

A-

Review: "The Other Side of the Wind"

In 1961, nearly a decade prior to principal photography began on Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, the filmmaker, whose most recent picture was Touch of Evil, began mulling over a project loosely based on Ernest Hemingway, who that year committed suicide. Welles intended his leading man to be an aging admirer of bullfighting who is enamored with a much younger bullfighter.

This concept ultimately stalled, lingering in the background for Welles well into the close of the decade, at which point the director opted to change the project’s setting to Hollywood and his central protagonist to a fading filmmaker. At last, in 1970, The Other Side of the Wind went into production…and would remain a work-in-progress over the six years to come. It was not until 1974 that Welles finally found his Jake Hannaford, the Hemingway-like figure who is killed in a car crash on his 70th birthday - none other than fellow actor-writer-director John Huston would dive into this pivotal role.

With nearly 100 hours of footage in the can, production wrapped on The Other Side of the Wind in early 1976. Instead of earning a theatrical run, the treatment you’d expect for a Welles-Huston collaboration, the picture would spend decades in legal obstacle hell, languishing long after the director’s death in 1985. Instrumental in saving the film were director (and co-star of the picture) Peter Bogdanovich and producer (and production manager on the film) Frank Marshall, both significantly responsible for getting the picture financed, edited and into the hands of Netflix, where it is now available for streaming.

Considering its awe-inspiring production history (and my admiration for so many Welles productions, perhaps most of all The Magnificent Ambersons), it does hurt a bit to report The Other Side of the Wind, while not without its pleasures, is mostly an incoherent mess, a haphazard satire of 1970s New Hollywood that is too bonkers to be boring but never on the level of Welles’ best work.

The picture opens on the sight of a totaled vehicle, which we learn, via narration from protege Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich), was driven by the now-deceased Hannaford. Earlier that day, prior to his death, we find Hannaford vying to rejuvenate his declining career. His comeback vehicle is hardly a mainstream picture along the lines of Citizen Kane or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre but rather a trippy, sex-packed art house production, performed without any dialogue.

Throughout The Other Side of the Wind, footage from the film within the film, headlined by the stunning Oja Kodar (as “The Actress”) and Bob Random, is intercut, leaving the proceedings all the more dizzying an endeavor. Much of the picture centers on Hannaford’s birthday party at an Arizona ranch where guests, the director himself most of all, become increasingly inebriated. Hannaford is desperate to secure funding for his picture, a quest that seems all the more improbable as the evening progresses.

The Other Side of the Wind is chock full of entrancing performances, with Huston a pitch-perfect fit for the dwindling director. He is surrounded by the likes of Susan Strasberg (as a ferocious film critic), Lilli Palmer (as an exasperated former star of the silver screen) and Mercedes McCambridge (as Hannaford’s longtime secretary), all game for the madness of these proceedings. Alas, these turns are largely upstaged by the disorderly, chaotically edited picture around them - just when a character pulls you in, you’re abruptly swept away.

Amazingly, amidst this starry cast, it is Kodar, in the film within the film, who leaves the most lasting impression. She has a hypnotic, intensely alluring screen presence, with the camera head over heels in love with her - no surprise, given she was the director’s girlfriend over the final years of his life. If the film within the film wasn’t so tedious and ridiculous, one has to wonder how much more the exciting Kodar could have excelled.

The Other Side of the Wind is of course a must-see for all Welles aficionados, warts and all. That does not, however, mean its a great picture. In the end, its production history is leaps and bounds more riveting than the final product before us.

C+

Review: "Can You Ever Forgive Me?"

In 1967, the year of Spencer Tracy’s death, up-and-coming writer Lee Israel broke through with a devastatingly great profile on Katharine Hepburn, published in Esquire. Over the following two decades, Israel penned a trio of celebrity biographies, one of which, Kilgallen (a portrait of journalist and game show panelist Dorothy Kilgallen), was lauded as among the finest bios of the 1980s.

By the 1990s, however, her past works proved long forgotten, as Israel found herself earning attention not for her biographies or countless magazine articles but rather her recent criminal activities.

Director Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?, based on Israel’s eponymous memoirs, opens on Israel (Melissa McCarthy) who, in 1991, is struggling to make ends meet, months behind on her rent and devastated that she cannot afford medical treatment for her beloved cat. Israel is desperate for an advance on her latest project, a biography of Fanny Brice, but her agent (the formidable Jane Curtin) cannot make that happen, nor does she terribly want to. The irksome, surly Israel has burned bridge after bridge in recent years and has no industry allies to speak of.

At last, Israel finds a companion in Jack Hock (Richard E. Grant), a vivacious grifter who shares in her disdain for society and dependency on the bottle. Hock isn’t the least bit shaken when Israel presents her grand scheme to bring home that elusive dough - she is going to earn a living fabricating signed personal letters from deceased, high-profile writers, from Brice to Noel Coward to Dorothy Parker. Israel finds fleeting success but, when suspicions are raised around her documents, Hock steps in as a partner in crime to sell them on her behalf. With the FBI on their trail, however, is it inevitable that Judgment Day lurks on the horizon.

With a sparkling screenplay from Jeff Whitty and the reliably amazing Nicole Holofcener, and led by a pair of actors in career-best form, wholeheartedly committed to the material, Can You Ever Forgive Me? ultimately emerges one of the year’s very best pictures.

McCarthy and Grant have a dazzling rapport, with each going to town on the comic and dramatic opportunities presented to them. Not to be overlooked is the rest of this splendid ensemble cast, including Curtin (who slays in her two scenes), Anna Deavere Smith (superb as exasperated ex) and particularly Dolly Wells, warm and perceptive as Anna, a book shop owner who takes a liking to Israel. A dinner between Anna and Israel proves one of the film’s most absorbing and affecting scenes, in a film full of them.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? will be richly deserving of every accolade it inevitably earns for McCarthy and Grant - but I sure hope they aren’t the picture’s lone recognition this awards season.

A

Review: "First Man"

A sense of deja vu came over me throughout First Man, director Damien Chazelle’s latest collaboration with leading man Ryan Gosling.

Two years ago, I was thoroughly enchanted by Gosling’s Oscar-nominated turn in Chazelle’s La La Land, a film which, despite my affection for its actors and overall look and feel, left me rather cold. An absorbing love story and Chazelle’s palpable affection for movie musicals aside, I never felt it quite got off the ground, nor, perhaps most egregious of all, did it sport a terribly memorable soundtrack.

Fast-forward to the present awards season and, once again, I am head over heels for Gosling - for my money, First Man marks career-best work and should catapult him right toward the top in the race for Best Actor - and decidedly less enamored with the proceedings around him.

This isn’t to say First Man is a bad picture but, after being spoiled in recent years by the dazzling likes of Gravity and Hidden Figures, it marks a surprisingly ho-hum endeavor.

Gosling portrays Neil Armstrong, the legendary American astronaut who, as you may have heard, made history in 1969 as the first person to walk on the moon. First Man opens on Armstrong eight years prior to that awe-inspiring event as the test pilot finds himself on a streak of aerodynamic calamities. Colleagues are concerned he is distracted, which is indeed the case - he and wife Janet (Claire Foy) are devastated by the failing health of young daughter Karen, who ultimately succumbs to a brain tumor.

Overwhelmed with grief, Armstrong dives further into work, applying for NASA’s Project Gemini. Accepted into the program, the Armstrongs join other astronaut families in moving out to Houston. With the Soviets making progress in their spacecraft efforts, Armstrong squarely focuses on his training and, in 1966, is named commander of the aborted Gemini 8 mission. Toward the close of the decade, Armstrong is again called upon to steer the ship, this time as commander of Apollo 11. The rest, of course, is history.

First Man is at once refreshingly unsentimental and curiously uninspiring.

Gosling’s restrained portrayal of Armstrong is brimming with melancholy and deeply affecting - he keeps the picture absorbing even while Josh Singer’s screenplay proves a colossal bore. Less successful is Foy, a usually marvelous actress who hits only familiar notes as Armstrong’s fretful wife. At least Foy has some modest meat to chew on, however - the rest of the cast is uniformly underused.

From a technical perspective, First Man marks a grand achievement in sound mixing and editing, with Chazelle doing a fine, if often workmanlike job staging the mission sequences. What is ultimately, stunningly missing from the picture is any sense of awe, that intense feeling of wonderment that swept the world on July 20, 1969.

First Man marks a triumph for its leading man but otherwise doesn’t much soar.

B

Review: "Halloween"

Michael Myers, it’s so nice to have you back where you belong. You may be in your sexagenarian years, yet you continue to bash in brains and slice and dice horny teenagers with masterful precision. It’s just too bad the picture around you this time doesn’t operate at your same commanding level.

I am a Halloween nut, through and through. Not only do I of course worship John Carpenter’s 1978 original - both among the finest pictures of its decade and greatest horror films of all-time - I’m even quite taken with Halloween II and Halloween: H20. Hell, throw Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers on television and I’ll cancel all of my prior commitments!

So, you can imagine I was quite surprised and more than a little heartbroken as I found myself not so enamored with the latest entry in the franchise, David Gordon Green’s Halloween - a follow-up to the Carpenter original that opts to pretend all prior sequels never came to fruition. Perhaps most key of all is it erases that pesky development, which first arouse in Halloween II, that Michael and Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode were siblings. This is something I was completely down for, yet Green’s Halloween doesn’t even satisfy at the same levels of Halloween II or H20.

In the dismal Halloween: Resurrection, Michael found himself confronted by the craze over reality television. This time around, it’s true-crime podcasting, presented in the form of a pair of British journalists (Jefferson Hall and Rhian Rees) who, 40 years following Michael’s murderous rampage in the first Halloween, pay the psychopath a visit at Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. You see, Michael has been imprisoned there since his capture by Dr. Loomis (RIP Donald Pleasance). Now, with Dr. Loomis having passed on, he’s being treated by another eccentric doc, Ranbir Sartain (Haluk Bilginer).

After egging Michael on, both showing him his former mask and bringing up Laurie, the podcasters pay a visit to none other than the sole survivor herself. Laurie has spent the past 40 years battling PTSD and preparing herself and her family for what she sees as Michael’s inevitable return. She’s been married and divorced twice and lost custody of her daughter Karen (Judy Greer), who now has a teenage daughter of her own, Allyson (Andi Matichak).

Laurie, no surprise, hasn’t the faintest interest in cooperating with the Brits. She’s far more focused on her old foe, who conveniently is being transferred to a new facility on the eve of Halloween. It should come as scant surprise that Michael of course manages an escape, gets his hands on his old mask and greets Haddonfield with a long overdue, plenty grisly return. If Laurie is prepared, the rest of the community, per usual, is very much susceptible to Michael’s prey.

Never before has this series been such a meandering slog as it is in its opening half hour. The insertion of true-crime podcasting into the franchise must have sounded timely and inspired on the page but it’s not the least bit compelling on the screen. Once Michael is back in action, the proceedings do at least muster the same satisfaction as a competent slasher picture, yet it’s never nearly on the same level as Carpenter’s original.

As always, Curtis gives it her all as Laurie and especially provides the picture a boost in its final half hour, a cat-and-mouse duel between she and Michael that is claustrophobic in the best sense. Unfortunately, the supporting cast around her isn’t terribly memorable and there is at least one character and plot twist that, thankfully briefly, sends the film jumping the shark. Kudos to the very funny Jibrail Nantambu, portraying the only character (besides Laurie) you’re genuinely rooting for Michael not to knock off.

Green does a fine job staging the rousing grand finale but the rest of his direction is strictly workmanlike stuff, decidedly not Carpenter-caliber. Speaking of Carpenter, however, his musical score, jazzed up a bit this time around, remains a stirring winner.

If Halloween is hardly the worst entry in the series, it also falls tragically short of the greatness once so present in this franchise.

B-

Review: "The Old Man & the Gun"

Nearly four decades ago, at the 53rd Academy Awards, Robert Redford and Sissy Spacek had their ultimate moments in the Oscar spotlight as the director and star of Ordinary People and Coal Miner’s Daughter, respectively. Redford scored honors for his filmmaking - and his directorial debut won Best Picture to boot - while Spacek earned Best Actress, to date her lone victory at the Oscars.

Inexplicably, these two titans of the big screen had never teamed up for a motion picture over their storied careers in cinema - that is, until now.

Watching David Lowery’s leisurely The Old Man & the Gun, based on David Grann’s 2003 article from The New Yorker, one wishes Redford and Spacek had collaborated at least half a dozen times prior. They make an absolutely irresistible duo, sporting an enchanting rapport guaranteed to make your heart flutter and plant a gigantic smile on your face.

Redford is Forrest Tucker, the charming career criminal who cannot get enough of robbing banks, escaping prison and doing the whole thing all over again. Spacek is Jewel, the fetching widow who leads the coziest of lives on her horse farm and is taken instantly with the 70-year-old culprit. At first, Jewel cannot even believe Forrest’s story but, over time, is able to overlook her companion’s wrongdoings - heck, even the bank employees he’s robbing have nothing but kind things to say about this gentleman.

If The Old Man & the Gun were exclusively focused on Redford and Spacek, it would be a pitch-perfect endeavor. Alas, there’s a detective on Forrest’s heels and he’s portrayed by Casey Affleck, in a lifeless performance that makes his Oscar-winning turn in Manchester by the Sea look positively giddy. The Affleck scenes feel curiously incomplete, as if much material was left on the cutting room floor. Wonderful actors like Keith Carradine and John David Washington (so fantastic earlier this year in BlackKklansman) linger in the background, sans much of anything to do. As Forrest’s longtime partners in crime, Danny Glover and Tom Waits have a tad more to do but too feel rather underutilized.

With that said, The Old Man & the Gun remains a must-see for the beauty that oozes out of the screen anytime Redford and Spacek grace it. You won’t find another film couple so downright adorable this awards season.

B+

Review: "A Star Is Born"

Alright, let’s get this out of the way. Ranking all things A Star Is Born…

The films: 1954 > 2018 > 1937 > 1976

The leading men: James Mason > Fredric March > Bradley Cooper > Kris Kristofferson

And, of course, the leading ladies: Judy Garland > Lady Gaga > Janet Gaynor > Barbra Streisand

Indeed, Cooper’s A Star Is Born does not reach the sky-high heights of George Cukor’s dazzling 1954 production - then again, what does? It is still a damn fine picture, especially remarkable a feat, given it marks both Cooper’s directorial debut and Gaga’s first stab at headlining a film as an actress. If the picture is ultimately an imperfect one, the richness of their efforts cannot be denied.

The film opens on Cooper’s Jackson Maine, a hard-drinking country star whose love for the bottle draws him one evening into a drag bar. There, he becomes enraptured by Gaga’s Ally, an aspiring singer who, despite her killer voice, is on the verge of giving up on her dreams. Initially resistant to his advances, Ally eventually tags along and, at one of Jackson’s concerts, has the chance to belt out a tune she’s recently composed.

Ally emerges something of an oversight sensation, the clip of her performance going viral. She becomes Jackson’s partner on the road but it is inevitable the prospect of a solo career will rear its head. Such comes to fruition through music producer Rez (Rafi Gavron) who, to some chagrin from both Ally and Jackson, is determined to reinvent Ally as an extravagant (and frankly, far less appealing) pop superstar. As her fame rises, as is the case in all A Star Is Born pictures, his addictions worsen, testing the relationship of these two soulmates.

A Star Is Born is at its most absorbing in the early-going, with Gaga something of a legit revelation. Film buffs will inevitably compare her turn to the likes of Garland and Gaynor, as I admittedly already have, but the performance it actually most reminds me of is Courtney Love’s in The People vs. Larry Flynt - an unaffected, lived-in, completely compelling effort from a musician mostly untested as an actress. Gaga’s rapport with Cooper is stirring and heartfelt, their chemistry as potent on stage as it is in the film’s quieter moments.

If Gaga soars and shimmers early on, the rest of the proceedings, while entertaining enough, don’t quite live up to the stunning promise of the opening hour. As Ally transforms into a pop A-lister, guesting on Saturday Night Live and bringing aboard a pack of back-up dancers, and Jackson further succumbs to his demons, the intimacy of their dynamic, so essential to the film’s success, somewhat fades. On reflection, nearly all of the film’s best and most affecting scenes arrive in the first half. That isn’t to say the latter half is bad - it’s just decidedly inferior.

Beyond Cooper and Gaga, both Sam Elliott (as Jackson’s exasperated brother and manager) and Andrew Dice Clay (as Ally’s father) leave lasting impressions. The original songs, in several cases written and/or produced by its stars, are splendid and the picture also happens to be gorgeously shot, with photography by the great Matthew Libatique.

Garland’s remains the ultimate A Star Is Born but I have to admit, Gaga’s isn’t terribly far behind.

A-

Review: "The Wife"

Thank heavens for Glenn Close.

Among the finest actress of the stage and screen over the past half-century, she is a cinematic goddess who can make even the most insipid of projects (like, for instance, Albert Nobbs) sparkle. When, however, she's graced with a gangbusters screenplay, legit fireworks are bound to happen.

Such is precisely the case in The Wife, a picture that finds Close in her most compelling form since the likes of Dangerous Liaisons and Reversal of Fortune. As was the case in those two films (with John Malkovich and Jeremy Irons), The Wife provides Close a comparably gifted leading man (Jonathan Pryce) who too devours the material and makes his leading lady all the more dazzling. 

The film opens on Joan and Joe Castleman, a duo married for nearly 40 years who reside quite comfortably in their lavish Connecticut home. One morning, they are awoken by the most welcome of phone calls - Joe has just been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his renowned body of work. Alongside son David (Max Irons, who manages his hold his own against these two powerhouses), off they go to Stockholm, where Joe shall pick up his prize.

As the trip progresses, however, family tensions gradually boil to the surface. For one, David deeply resents his father for neglecting to recognize his own writing contributions. The real strain, however, is between husband and wife, with such anxiety only acerbated by the presence of Nathaniel Bone (Christian Slater), a writer who desperately wishes to pen a biography of Joe. The more Nathaniel meddles in their trip, the more exasperation Joan and David feel toward the man of the hour. It isn't long before repressed feelings, not to mention unsettling revelations, send the Castlemans spiraling out of control. 

Over its opening hour or so, The Wife is the most leisurely of slow burns, a fine showcase for its stars, sharply written by the great Jane Anderson, but admittedly lacking much in the way of exhilaration - I have to wonder, frankly, if many viewers, including those key members of the Academy, will have patience for this picture. 

There comes a point, at last, when Band-Aids are ripped off the skin and Close and Pryce have the license to ferociously go at it on the screen in a fashion they really haven't been able to in years. The Wife ultimately emerges a master class in acting for these two juggernauts, who have boundless chemistry and ring completely convincing as a couple in crisis. The brilliance of Anderson's screenplay makes Close and Pryce all the more shimmer.

With that said, is The Wife a perfect film? Not really. Some of the Castlemans' story is conveyed through flashbacks, which aren't as compelling or expertly acted, though they do at least provide the exquisite Elizabeth McGovern the opportunity to swoop in for a memorable, if all too fleeting cameo as an author who tries to dissuade young Joan (Annie Starke) from diving into professional writing. 

While not without its faults, The Wife is an absolute must-see for Close's riveting turn, which is nicely supported by Pryce and Irons, not to mention Anderson's dynamite script. Fingers crossed this early release doesn't fall through the cracks of a chaotic Oscar season...

A-

Review: "Crazy Rich Asians"

This past weekend marked the passing of Neil Simon, among the 20th century's most prolific writers of the stage and screen. A master of the romantic comedy, among Simon's best works were the legendary likes of Barefoot in the Park, The Goodbye Girl and Seems Like Old Times. 

Simon's mastery of dialogue and expert feeling for what makes a romcom prosper would have worked wonders for Crazy Rich Asians, a picture which sports an enchanting cast and couldn't be much more visually splendid, yet offers very few surprises along the way. 

The film, based on Kevin Kwan's 2013 novel, opens on Rachel Chu (Constance Wu), an economics professor at NYU who accepts boyfriend Nick Young (Henry Golding)'s invitation to join him in Singapore for his best friend's wedding. Little does Rachel realize Nick's family is, well, crazy rich, and that he is considered one of Singapore's most eligible bachelors. Awaiting Rachel on this journey will be a sea of oddball relatives, self-absorbed socialites and, most daunting of all, Nick's mother Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh), a towering figure who is skeptical of Rachel even prior to her arrival. 

The Rachel-Eleanor dynamic, if familiar, is handily the most compelling part of Crazy Rich Asians, if exclusively on account of Yeoh's commanding performance. Any time she graces the screen, even if she's devoid of dialogue, the proceedings are lifted to something truly riveting. Take, for instance, the scene on the family's grand staircase, in which Eleanor tells Rachel she'll never amount to enough for her son. It's a breathtaking moment in a film with all too few of them. 

When Eleanor isn't in the picture, Crazy Rich Asians is a more scattershot affair, sometimes flourishing (like anytime the marvelous Awkwafina shows up as Rachel's college bestie Peik Lin) and other times flatlining (during a dreary subplot involving Nick's cousin and her cheating husband). Perhaps most frustrating is how little some of the supporting players are showcased. As Peik Lin's mother Neena, for instance, Koh Chieng Mun makes a fabulous, splashy first impression and then all but disappears. There is also Tan Kheng Hua, devastatingly great as Rachel's mom but again, it's practically a cameo. 

Wu and Golding exude no shortage of charisma as Rachel and Nick, though the writing often proves too mawkish for them to completely prevail. Director Jon M. Chu and photographer Vanja Cernjul have as much passion for the Singapore scenery as Woody Allen does New York in his pictures - the setting is especially rich early on, as the couple takes in dinner at a street vendor marketplace. Of course, for the most part, this is no Woody Allen-level comedy.

Crazy Rich Asians is worthwhile for Yeoh's crazy amazing performance alone but hardly ranks among the finest contemporary romcoms. 

B