I am a fan of the soap opera. I freely admit it. Wacky plot lines, serial marriages, pregnancies that last 5 years and children that grow up in six months. And amnesia, lots and lots of amnesia. I’m all for it. What makes them fun is that they know what they are. They aren’t shooting for high cinema, and they don’t take themselves too seriously. When a movie comes along that has all the elements of a good soap, I sit up and take notice. The Majestic has “soap opera for the big screen” written all over it. Sounds like fun, so lets dive in.

The Majestic stars Jim Carrey as Pete Appleton*, a screenwriter hoping to make the break from B movies to the A list in 1950’s Hollywood. The problem with this 1950’s Hollywood is that it is smack in the middle of the McCarthy Era. Pete finds himself named as a communist, as did so many writers at the time. Upon learning of his impending appearance before HUAC, his studio fires him, his upcoming movie is cancelled and his starlet girlfriend dumps him. Distraught over what has become of his once charmed life, Pete decides to just drive as far as his cute little car will take him.

Unfortunately, his cute car takes him off a bridge and deposits him on the shores of the river outside of Lawson, CA, with only the clothes on his back, and absolutely no memory of his past. Complete amnesia. I’m not kidding. He’s taken into town, where people seem to think he looks a bit familiar, particularly Harry Trimble (Martin Landau) who is convinced that Pete is his long lost son, Luke. The town of Lawson lost a lot of men in the war, and has never really recovered. The reappearance of Luke (who had been listed as MIA), one of the town’s golden boys, is like a shot of adrenaline that wakes up the town and makes Pete/Luke into a lightening rod for change and rebirth. He reconnects with his old girlfriend, Adele (Laurie Holden), and his “father”, as well as assisting in the rebuilding of the town’s only movie theater. The Majestic, of course. Throughout this, Pete/Luke has absolutely no idea who he really is, and the townspeople ask few questions of their prodigal son (like, where has he been for the past 9 ½ years?). When questions are raised, they are quickly squelched by the newfound zest for life in the small town.

Of course, the Committee still searches for Pete Appleton. His disappearance has convinced one of their top weasels (Bob Balaban) that he must be the very nexus of evil. They become determined to hunt him down and mete out justice.

So what will become of Pete? Is he really Luke? Will he be found? Will he ever regain his memory? Will this movie ever cease to be so ridiculously melodramatic? The only question I can answer is the last. And the answer is………………NO. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a sappier, more predictable, overly long, preachy, moralistic, clichéd piece of film. Ever. And I have seen a whole lot of crappy movies. The Majestic takes itself so seriously that it utterly fails to be either enlightening or entertaining. The situations are set up to be so ludicrous that I kept expecting Jim Carrey to pull a Ferris Buehler and directly address the camera with some off the cuff wise crack. It never happens, but it should. Given the schlocky plot line, the movie seriously needs some comic relief that it never gets. Instead, it simply plods along on its preordained course toward its preordained finish. It even manages to be offensive along the way, which is something of an achievement for a movie this lame.

*************SPOILER ALERT****************

If you intend to see this mess, you should skip this section, although even if you do see it, you’ll see this part coming a mile away. At the end of the movie, when Pete does finally appear before HUAC, he gives an impassioned little speech about the constitution and how the committee is just bad. Then the committee lets him go, the studio gives him his job back, and all is hunky dory. Somehow, if it were that easy to get HUAC off your back, I don’t think quite so many lives would have been ruined during this time. The reality of the damage done by HUAC and blacklisting is whitewashed for the sake of providing this character with his happy ending. The writer (Michael Sloane) should be ashamed, as he knows perfectly well that this era destroyed innocent people at will. Implying that all one had to do was be a “stand-up guy” to escape their wrath is to offend every person that was victimized. End of sermon. You may be seated.

******************END SPOILER*****************

Every single performance in the movie is wooden and unconvincing. Understandably so, given the dialogue the actors are forced to choke out. The result is a bunch of characters that you not only don’t relate to, but also don’t care about. The only passable performance is that of Martin Landau as Harry Trimble. Somehow, in this hideous, talent-sucking quagmire, he manages to make Harry sympathetic and likeable, the one bright spot in the movie.

The score by (Mark Isham) is exactly what you would expect, overblown, overdramatic, just over-everything. Same for the costumes, sets and Mayberry-esque small town and its denizens. The movie makes a serious attempt to convince us that these people, these ridiculous situations, are realistic, rather than the stuff of treacle laden 50’s propaganda. Director Frank Darabont should either have cut way down on the sap factor or made the film into parody. As it stands, it’s just trying to recapture the past with an awkward, unrealistic and all-out phony story and rendering. It even fails as homage to movies of the 50’s, making the characters so dumb and the situations so simplistic and unrealistic that it effectively nullifies any possible tribute it is trying to achieve.

As a complete aside, this movie does unintentionally remind the viewer of the fallout of war. The lost lives, the ruined families, destroyed dreams and emotional wreckage. Although the filmmakers had no way to know it at the time, this has become more poignant in the current political climate. This small virtue, however, in no way redeems the actual movie.

The fatal error made by the makers of The Majestic is that they just took themselves and their ridiculous little story far too seriously. Had they lightened it up, just a touch, they might have been in that golden zone of the soap opera. You know what’s gonna happen, but you really don’t care ‘cause you’re just along for the ride. Now, I know that this movie is supposed to be Capra-like. But even the sappiest Capra film had to have more inherently likable characters and less profoundly stupid set-ups than this. The Majestic plays like an overly serious episode of Leave it to Beaver, and the incredible thing of it is…….they aren’t kidding. If you really like your old fashioned melodrama served straight up by a high profile present day comedian, then you may like this. Everyone else should avoid it like the plague.





* The character name is a not very cute little joke, as Joseph McCarthy was born in Appleton, WI, where a small group of people gathers each year at his grave to mourn his passing. Yes, this is scary.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD