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"Pandaemonium"
(Reviewed June 9, 2001)
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Talk about a hard sell. Imagine having to market a film about the friendship and subsequent estrangement of turn-of-the-19th-century poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth to the American public. Yikes!
"Pandaemonium" has the good and bad points of any "Masterpiece Theatre"-type outing. While it is refreshing to see a movie that's about something other than car chases and people getting shot, the characters often seem like waistcoated stock characters (the wild-eyed dreamer, the stodgy friend, his shining-eyed sister, an omnipresent villain). Also, while I have to admit that I'm not completely up to speed on my Coleridgiana (I blame my American education), purists may be troubled by what look like more than a few liberties that are taken with the two poets' accomplishments. Did Dorothy Wordsworth really convince her brother that the opening line to his most famous work should not be "I wandered lonely as a cow," by suggesting that he might want to change "cow" to "cloud?" Was it truly Dorothy who is to thank for suggesting an ending to Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and for keeping "Kubla Khan" from being lost to the ages?
Still, that selfsame Dorothy is the highlight of the movie. Actress Emily Woof is perfectly cast as the sort of highly opinionated, flakey-but-smug girl you knew in college who simultaneously infuriated and intrigued you. At first she seems completely annoying and offputting...but then you realized, "Hey, there's something sort of hot about this kinda crazy cutie."
One problem is that, as with any movie about the creative process, it's hard to depict the act of writing poetry as anything other than dull without looking rather silly. When Coleridge, mere seconds after dosing himself with a wee bit o' laudanum, begins furiously scribbling over pages and pages of foolscap with his flying quill...let's just say it looks as unlikely as movie scenes of computer hackers twitching, dancing and gyrating at their keyboards.
The movie's mightily melodramatic (and historically suspect) climax put things right over the top. And after the fade to black, you will be stupefied at the song and visuals that run under the credits. (Honestly, what appears on screen is so inappropriately outrageous that I won't ruin it by spoiling the unpleasant surprise.)
But what the hell, at least the enterprise was semi-interesting. Which is a hell of a lot more than can be said for, oh, "Tomb Raider."
Back Row Grade: C-
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