I believe that reviewers tackling The Majestic are contractually obligated to make reference to the fact that this is Frank Darabont's attempt to make a Frank Capra film. So here was my plan in attacking The Majestic: I was going to look at the film's 150 minute running time and observe that Frank Capra never needed more than an hour and a half to tell any of his stories. Then I looked into it and it turns out that I was wrong. It's a Wonderful Life is 130 minutes long. Mr. Smith Goes To Washington is 125. Meet John Doe runs 135. And Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, the shortest of the Capra-esque Capra films still runs 125 minutes. So for me, that raised a completely different question: If Frank Capra actually made fairly long films, especially for the genre, why is it that in my mind, his films all zip by in no time flat, but The Majestic seemed to drag on like a 100 meter dash contested by corpses — forget never seeming to end, it never seemed to begin.

My most immediate thought was that *I* could probably edit The Majestic into a better film. I'm not very good with film editing, but if you digitize the movie and put the footage on a computer with AVID or some other linear editing system, I'm certain I could chop thirty minutes from the film and it would instantly become more watchable. I would also cut the five or ten really awkward edits that drew me out of the film. There are unintentional jump-cuts and bad eye-line matches that simply never should have been allowed to see the light of day (or the light of the projector through the celluloid. For much of this, I have no choice but to blame Jim Page, the film's editor, who had never edited a high profile feature before. But while the bad physical cuts are probably his fault, the total bloated failure of The Majestic largely rests on the shoulders of Michael Sloane, whose script is too simplistic and Frank Darabont, who somehow felt that this simplicity still warranted epic length. Had the movie come in at under two hours, it would be tough to be offended by its pretense, but that extra half hour makes it personal. And while Jim Carrey is acceptable in a kinda dramatic role, the extra padding in The Majestic only gives the viewer more time to wonder why he isn't something more than acceptable and how much as we wish he were, just as Frank Darabont isn't Frank Capra, Jim Carrey sure isn't Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper. He's not in their league.

The Majestic opens in Hollywood in the early 1950s. Our hero, Peter Appleton (Jim Carrey), is an up and coming writer, currently toiling in the "B" pictures, but he has high hopes that his next film, about a Coal Miner's strike, will elevate him to the big time. Not that he's doing badly. With only one produced credit to his name, he has a starlet girlfriend and a shiny Mercedes. Clearly back in the Fifties they paided inexperienced screenwriters much better than they do today. So he's doing OK until he's informed that he's being called before the House UnAmerican Activities Commitee (HUAC) because he apparently went to a single meeting of the Bread for Guns club in college to try to impress a girl. The club had Communist ties and while nobody thinks Appleton is a Communist, they insist that he go before HUAC and name names so that he can work again. That night, in frustration, Peter and a stuffed monkey (in the film for no reason I can figure beyond that it really really resembles Carrey) get drunk and as he's driving home, he skids to avoid a possum and drives his car off a bridge, nearly drowning, escaping, but bumping his head. Or something.

He wakes up the next morning on the beach and without any memory. The man who found him (James Whitmore, who fans will recognize from Darabont's The Shawshank Redemption but is one of the best actors of his age going) takes him into town. Everybody he meets looks at him and says he looks familiar, but only Harry Trimble (Martin Landau) looks at him and blanches as if he's seen a ghost. Harry is convinced that Peter is his son, Luke, who went off to war, was a hero, but never came home. It turns out that the town lost more than its share of boys in World War 2 and "Luke"'s return is God-send for everyone. It restores their faith. And Peter doesn't remember anything, so he goes along with it. Harry sees Luke's return as a signal to reopen the Majestic, the movie theatre he let go to ruin when Luke disappeared. Especially interested in seeing Luke again is Adelle (Laurie Holden, who looks a lot like either Amy Smart, or an early Hollywood star, either way, even though you've never seen her before, she seems right here), the woman Luke was going to marry.

But meanwhile, back in LA, evil forces are brewing, as HUAC counsel Elvin Clyde (Bob Balaban) has decided to interpret Peter's disappearance as a sign that the writer was more than just a minor cog in the Communist machine. He decides that Peter was a major Communist figure and he sends goons out to find him. At at certain point time really starts to blur. It takes weeks, apparently, for anybody to notice Peter's car washed up on the beach, but the entire project of renovating the Majestic takes only one musical montage.

My first problem with The Majestic is how goshdarned dull the character of Peter/Luke is. This kind of script only works if the distinction in their characters are made clearer. Look at Overboard! with Goldie Hawn. Or don't. It's really not necessary. It's only a mediocre movie, but it gives a better picture of how to handle what is essentially the same plot. Originally Hawn's character is spoiled and snooty, she loses her memory and Kurt Russell basically enslaves her and breaks her spirit and when when she remembers again, she's a better person for having had the spirit taken out of her. It's actually a horribly regressive film in terms of its gender roles, but the character exploration is at least interesting. In The Majestic there's just too much blandness. If Peter were a What Makes Sammy Run?-esque go-getter, willing to kill his sister for a break, and went to the small town and learned something while forgetting his memory, I would feel that the film charted a noticeable story arc. Instead, he's just sortta meek and "every-man" in Hollywood and he becomes a tiny bit more spirted and "every-man" in the small town. It's later made clear that Peter wasn't interested in taking a stand, but that Luke would always fight for right and therefore even once he begins to remember, Peter must find a way to be more like Luke. But "apathetic" isn't an easy character trait for an actor to play and it's certainly too "gray" to be of any interest in Darabont's universe, which is all-too black and white in terms of its morality. Mostly by going from Peter to Luke, the character just goes from gray to white. It's not a big enough shift to make the two and a half hour journey worthwhile. He doesn't become a vastly better person, just slightly. I guess that's more realistic, but Capra's movies weren't realistic, they were darkly tinged fairy tales of sorts and Darabont is trying to do the same thing here. He's just failing.

He's failing because Carrey is trying so hard to be nice and sincere that you never for a second believe that his character is actually sincere about anything. It looks like an actor playing sincerity, which isn't what the part required. In The Truman Show Carrey was about to use this faux openness to perfect effect. Here was a man whose very reality was synthetic, so naturally his pleasant and open demeanor would be synthetic as well. Carrey's performance never seemed natural and that was exactly what that part required. But he seems nearly as synthetic in The Majestic and that's problematic. He's trying so hard to be subtle that he become indistinct, totally unrecognizable as the energetic Jim Carrey who audiences love. He's basically trying to play a leading man, rather than trying to actually be one. Put a younger Tom Hanks in this role and instantly The Majestic becomes a better movie. Put a young Jimmy Stewart in the role and instantly The Majestic actually becomes a *good* movie. I hate to say it, but it's true. Carrey is fine here, but his failure to be better than that is a major liability.

This is especially true considering the strength of the cast around him. Landau and Whitmore and Hal Holbrook (as the head of the HUAC hearing) are acting treasure. Balaban, Ron Rifkin (studio lawyer), David Ogden Stiers (as the town doctor), and Jeffrey DeMunn (as the town mayor) are reliable veterans. The cast is so good that you almost accept the small town setting. And then there's Bruce Campbell in the film-within-a-film that Carrey's character wrote.

The Majestic looks beautiful. Never less. David Tattersall's cinematography is what Classic Hollywood Cinema would have looked like with today's color palate. It's all soft lighting, glorious sunsets, and handsome interiors. And since Darabont is a great visual director, he knows that this kind of film doesn't require fancy fast camera motions, it requires slow tracking shots and lots and lots of close-ups. It's the pacing that's all off. Every emotional high point, the camera lingers just a bit too long, as if waiting for the slowest of audience members to catch up. Darabont and composer Mark Isham (the current master of sonic schmaltz) have no faith at all in the audience. Every time Darabont holds a shot while the score hits a new peak, they seem to be suggesting that without this manipulation, the audience will never begin to understand the complexity of what's going on. Watch Capra's films, he has a love for the small town people he depicts and a great respect for his audience. The reason why his films feel so short is that they're just loaded with character and plot and once they start, they push you along. They're manipulative, but Capra earns every single cheer and tear from the viewer. Darabont's film is full of seemingly-important silences and sentiment. Did you read about the recent grade inflation at Harvard and how the sentiment is that once you got in, you probably deserve A's throughout? Darabont is like that. After two straight Best Picture nominees (The Shawshank Redemption [which deserved its nomination] and The Green Mile [which was a good movie, but didn't]), Darabont seems to just be going through the motions. The story doesn't earn the payoff.

Sloane's script has occasion nice touches, but it's simplistic and not in a Capra-smart way. The HUAC stuff is a mess. He moralizes, but doesn't complicate, as if the 1950s really were a simple black-and-white period in American history. Nothing is as simple as Sloane seems to think it is. The town that lost all of its sons is a great idea and The Majestic is a good image. But Sloane doesn't do enough with the old movie theatre. He has too many symbolic locations and objects that he wants to cover as well. Eliminate the war memorial, graveyard, and lighthouse and the stuff with the piano and pump up the stuff at the old movie palace and maybe it would have worked. Or eliminate the movie palace and the piano and play more with the town in mourning and that would have worked in a different way. But the script tries to do too many things and thus does none of them justice.

The Majestic gains some interest now because it's become timely since September 11. As more and more people are guilty by suspicion and the Constitution gets ignored (at best) or trampled upon (let's hope it doesn't happen too much), there's a purity to The Majestic that will be appealing to many people. But it's a predictable purity and a cheap purity (if such things can be said to exist). It's a purity devoid of intellect. Capra's films always championed the essential goodness and perhaps its time for revivals of some of those films rather than subjecting audiences to horrid retreads like Adam Sandler's Mr. Deeds and pale imitators like this film.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD