Keanu Reeves a romantic lead? Nah!
Keanu Reeves a romantic lead? Nah!
By Christy Lemire
NEW YORK (AP): Sweet November is a remake of a 1968 film of the same name. But it also rehashes Love Story, Autumn in New York, and any other movie in which a high-powered, self-centered jerk finds humility in the arms of a beautiful woman who's dying.
It would all be so, so heartrending if it didn't star Keanu Reeves, who doesn't act so much as simply occupy space. He and Charlize Theron look great together - they're both gorgeous, and she manages to sparkle even when her character is dying of non- Hodgkin's lymphoma. But the tears won't flow, simply because it is too hard - even for the weepiest chick-flick chicks - to accept Reeves as a romantic lead.
He plays advertising executive Nelson Moss, who must be emotionally void because he lives in a hip, modern San Francisco loft with lots of stainless steel appliances and television sets. The decor is gray, he dresses in gray, his personality is gray. Oklahoma, we get the point.
One day, he drives his gray Mercedes to the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew his license. There, sunny clumsy Sara Deever (Theron) literally stumbles upon him in a painfully awkward meet-cute. He cheats off her test paper and gets her kicked out, so she thrusts herself upon him, demanding that he drive her places.
Sara also has an offer for Nelson, one she has made to a series of uptight men in the past: She wants him to live with her in her brightly-colored hippie-girl pad for a month. That's all. And at the end of November, he can leave, a better person. It's her way of living her last days to the fullest.
At first he's reluctant. It's an improbable premise for a relationship (and a movie, for that matter). But after he gets fired and his girlfriend dumps him in the same day, he thinks, why not?
Sara persuades Nelson to loosen up. They eat ice-cream cones and frolic on the beach with cute dogs, with stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin County shimmering behind them. She even inspires him to play father figure to the shy pre-teen boy across the street (Liam Aiken) and attend dinner parties with the transvestite downstairs (Jason Isaacs).
His shallow friends don't like the new Nelson, especially Vince (Greg Germann, doing a smarmy ad exec version of the smarmy lawyer he plays on Ally McBeal). Nelson doesn't care. He loves her, dude.
And that's the problem. Sara doesn't want him to love her. Sara didn't expect to fall in love herself. And as November draws to a close, so does her life.
Director Pat O'Connor (Inventing the Abbots) tries his darndest to keep the film from meandering toward the maudlin, but without much success. It becomes increasingly more painful to watch. And maybe that's just the nature of this kind of film - maybe it has to tug shamelessly at your heartstrings.
But the movie does look great, thanks to dreamy camerawork by cinematographer Ed Lachman, who collaborated with Steven Soderbergh on Erin Brockovich and The Limey. Many scenes have the wistful, melancholy look of another of Lachman's films, last year's The Virgin Suicides.
Isaacs breathes life into his early scenes as Sara's gay neighbor, until he dons a green sequined dress, makeup and wig and goes into over-the-top, stereotypical drag-queen mode. The role couldn't be more different from his villainous Col. Tavington in The Patriot.
Theron does some of the best work of her career in this, her first shot at a leading role. She is lovely and warm and vibrant.
Reeves looks more comfortable when his character shirks his corporate yuppie ways and adopts Sara's laid-back lifestyle. Maybe the film would have worked better if he and Theron had swapped roles from the beginning.
Sweet November, a Warner Bros. release, runs 119 minutes.