Jack Goes Boating (2010)

The Worst Film Ever

hyped garbage

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Realistic and beautifully rendered view into the various stages and types of relationships. Brilliant acting. My goodness, what an incredible loss that we no longer have Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Seymour Hoffmann apparently died of drugs, so it's hardly surprising to find them featuring in his directorial effort. I enjoyed watching him learning to swim at the local pool, since I am pretty aquatic myself, but other than that the film lacked interest. Hoffmann's character's friend, Clyde, a fellow limo driver, confides to him that his wife had a two-year affair five years earlier and he still worries about it, even thinking she might be launching another. Hoffmann's character is horrified. Clyde introduces him to Connie, who works at Clyde's wife's office, selling mortician services and regularly getting molested by the mortician himself. They take a shine to each other. She lets him stroke her yoni, very gently, while conversing with him. Later in their relationship, she urges him to take her: "Overcome me", she says. He does so, and they seem idyllically happy. Meanwhile Clyde's relationship is on the rocks. Clyde hits cocaine and smokes hashish through a four-way hookah at Hoffmann's character's long-awaited dinner party for Connie. It's a disaster. They are obliged to escape. Later, they do go boating on the lake, so it ends happily ever after. Recommended.

Jack Goes Boating (2010)Based on Philip Seymour Hoffman's transparent, penetrating performance, this movie will hold up in the future as well as it does now. But I think it will disappear for many years because it doesn't pull off anything sensational. And that's its strength. It's not a subtle movie, and in many ways it's a little too obvious pulling on heartstrings. But maybe that's okay turf for an interpersonal drama.The tale of two couples who are friends and who are having various hopes and troubles together as both friends a lovers is an old one, but it must be the best of material in some ways because it's the best of material in life, love and friendship. Keeping it focused on two pairs of people is not just movie-making convenience (though it is that, too), but it's the truth of life sometimes, too.This isn't an edgy story, and in some ways it's so mundane it would seem to totter into boredom. But Hoffman, as Jack, is too sympathetic and convincing to let the movie get away from him. He's a great actor, we all know that, and he's showing he's a good, if not inventive or brilliant, director as well. If there is a conventional structure--set up, hints at conflict, conflict, resolution--there is a restraint and economy to make it all make sense. A strong movie. And it's impressive now if you're in the right mood, and will be impressive in thirty years, too, if we can keep track of it somehow. I think it is already slowly disappearing from view, so give it a good look.

It's never a pleasure to report that a film project brought to life largely through the efforts of someone whose work you greatly admire is a misfire, but such is the case with "Jack Goes Boating." Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of the best actors currently working, directed, co-wrote and stars in this oddball "comedy" about two sad sacks who find love in each other. It's like a darker, updated version of "Marty," with Hoffman standing in for Ernest Borgnine and the part of the wallflower, played memorably by Betsy Blair in the earlier film, played here by Amy Ryan. However, there's no rooting interest in this film as there was in "Marty." The characters played by Hoffman and Ryan are so weird, Ryan's especially, as to be nearly mentally ill. Indeed, Ryan's character is terribly written, as is the only other female character in the movie, a mutual friend played by Daphne Rubin-Vega as a vicious harpy. Her husband is Hoffman's best friend, and the film's major set piece is a disastrous dinner party at which Hoffman and Ryan watch their married friends, along with their marriage, self-destruct before their very eyes. I guess we're supposed to understand from this why Hoffman and Ryan are both so relationship shy; neither wants to end up in something as awful as the marriage that apparently serves as their only frame of reference. Are there no other married couples in the entire city of New York who might set a different example? The tone and pacing of the film is stilted and odd, as if Hoffman was trying too hard to give his film a quirky vibe. It's only 90 minutes long but it feels much longer thanks to the numerous slow and painful conversations we have to endure from these characters who remain at best obtuse and at worst downright unlikable.Grade: C