This review appeared in ICON and is reprinted with permission. Also, kids, if you want to read the review online, please head to www.icondv.com. But be sure to come back here, you hear?
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Let’s start with the obvious: In Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins looks nothing like the great director. Crammed into a fat-suit, his handsome features barely distorted by buttery jowls, he resembles Jeffrey Tambor—if the Arrested Development actor swallowed a large beach ball and had his legs amputated. The image created is a constant distraction that places Hopkins, a wonderful actor, in a hopeless situation.
Good news for Hopkins, if you can call it that: he’s not the
lone faulty party. Sacha Gervasi’s biopic is a lumbering, forgettable collection
of half-thoughts. Aside from Hopkins’s stupendous non-transformation, the
film’s other memorable aspect is its ironic refusal to create a stir.
Gervasi (Anvil: The
Story of Anvil) does one thing
right, focusing on a distinct period of time. It’s 1959 and Hitchcock, 60 years
old and his legacy secure, is high on the success of North by Northwest. The feeling is over in minutes. “Shouldn’t you
quit while you’re ahead?” a reporter asks after the premiere. In an unfortunate
harbinger of the movie’s style, thunder crashes in the distance.
Hitchcock is determined to find something fresh. He passes
on The Diary of Anne Frank and Casino Royale. Neither is a “nasty,
little piece of work.” Psycho, a new book
about mother-loving serial killer Ed Gein, fits the bill nicely. A skittish Paramount
won’t make it, so Hitchcock finances the movie—a whopping $800,000—himself. Why
go through the trouble? “I want to feel that kind of freedom again,” he tells
his wife, Alma (Helen Mirren), who has been his creative lifeblood from the
beginning.
Alma is the strong woman behind the famed shapely
silhouette—killing Marion Crane in Psycho’s
first 30 minutes is her suggestion—but she’s tired of getting second billing.
She’s tired of her husband’s obsession with beautiful, young blondes. She’s
tired of being at his beck and call. She’s tired that she can’t carve her own
niche other than being the faithful, supportive Mrs. Hitchcock. It’s been going
on too long, so you can’t blame Alma when her dapper married friend (Danny
Huston) gets increasingly chummy during their writing collaboration.
The conflict behind Alma and Alfred’s union would make for a
compelling film. It’s too bad Hopkins looks like a human Grimace. But Gervasi
wages a constant battle with no clear winner: recalling the last golden age of
Hollywood movies vs. reveling in its dark undercurrent. John McLaughlin’s
script focuses more on revealing facts about the production, which keeps the
movie locked at a strolling pace. Gervasi’s stabs at darkness are either
unintentionally comical (Hitchcock taking out his anger on a pool skimmer) or, reminiscent
of that aforementioned lightning bolt, condescending and overdone. Hitchcock periodically
talks to Gein (Michael Wincott) and envisions all his enemies as he shows
Anthony Perkins (a perfectly cast James D’Arcy) how to stab Janet Leigh
(Scarlett Johansson). There’s a politeness to those scenes, which would have
benefitted from utilizing Hopkins’ famed intensity. It’s too bad he resembles
the Michelin Man in a suit.
Missed opportunities accumulate. Two wonderful actresses are
present. One is used sparingly (Toni Collette) and the other (Johansson) serves
as a subterfuge for Hitchcock’s blonde ambitions. That’s what you hire Jessica
Biel, cast here as Vera Miles, for. The feisty, independent Alma gets defined with
a stock “you need me” speech and by replacing her ailing husband on set, a
scene so hokey that it should have been accompanied by “I Am Woman.” (I won’t
even go into the ending.) Hitchcock could
have been a Hollywood satire veiled in Eisenhower-era stodginess, a merciless
portrayal of a tortured genius and his unsatisfied wife. Instead, it just stands
there— one foot in the sunshine, the other in the darkness—wasting our time. [PG-13]
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