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Captain Corelli's Mandolin
(Reviewed July 26, 2001, by James Dawson)
-
There actually may have been a charming, tearjerking melodrama buried somewhere in this very disappointing movie, but none of the filmmakers managed to find it, which is kind of a shame. Part of the time, "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" tries to be a gentle, fable-like tale of a Greek island's proud residents interacting with endearingly easygoing occupying Italian soldiers in World War II. But the movie's incongruously violent battle scenes, clumsy stereotyping, dumb plotting and just plain bad acting make the would-be souffle fall with a thud.
This is a movie in which we are supposed to believe that a Greek girl who presumably grew up on a very small island with the man she agrees to marry would not realize that the reason he is not responding to her letters is because he can't read or write. (One would think she may have noticed his absence at school...or, at the very least, that his mother would set her straight sometime before she scribbled her ONE-HUNDREDTH LETTER to the guy.) It is a movie in which a character mails another character a package without bothering to include any note whatsoever mentioning the minor detail of how that character happens to be alive after several missing years. And it is one of those krazy-kasting flicks in which Spaniard Penelope Cruz and Englishmen John Hurt and Christian Bale (!!!) all are supposed to pass for Greeks.
About Ms. Cruz: There's no denying that this lady is a certified knockout. She also cuts a very sexy rug in a hot dance scene (which is another dumb moment in the film, considering that we are supposed to believe she would dirty-dance with an Italian soldier while the mother of her missing-in-action Greek soldier fiancee was sitting at a table watching). But somebody's gotta figure out that the only characters Cruz should play are mutes. Every time she opens her mouth, it's groan time. I've now seen her in four of her English-language movies, and every time it's the same: She looks fantastic, but she speaks and emotes about as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger. (She does, however, have an extremely brief topless scene in this movie that includes two one-second shots of her nubbins. For those who care about such things. Ahem.)
All the raw material was here to make a hankie-grabber, but none of it worked. Beautiful scenery, though, and incredibly well shot (by sometime Kubrick cinematographer John Toll).
Back Row Grade: D (because I can't possibly give an "F" to a movie in which Penelope Cruz is topless)
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