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Sylvia
(Reviewed October 25, 2003)
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Life got you down? Feeling depressed? Wondering if it's even worth going on with your sad and sorry day-to-day existence? Then for the love of sweet merciful Jeebus, don't see this movie!
If you're not up on the personal lives of your major 20th-century poets, suffice it to say that this bio of Sylvia Plath and her wandering husband, British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes, is not
exactly the feel-good flick of 2003. Gwyneth Paltrow is Sylvia, an artsy-'n'-anxiety-prone upper-crust American flake who falls for Hughes (Daniel Craig) at college on the sceptr'd isle in the 1950s. Their
courtship includes Paltrow quoting Chaucer to cows from a punt rowed by Hughes; a poetry smackdown among tweedy friends trying to out motormouth each other that somehow doesn't have quite the
same urgency as a similar scene in "8 Mile"; and an awkward meeting with Plath's chilly-as-New-England mother (played by Blythe Danner, lil' Gwynnie's real-life mum). After Sylvia and Ted marry, he
cheats, she gets jealous, she wigs out, she can't let it go, she REALLY can't let it go, and...well, let's just say there ain't no happy ending here, folks.
Paltrow and Craig are actually pretty good as intent-and-intellectual soulmates, the kind of people you can't imagine ever actually having any F-U-N. Still, the overall tone of "Sylvia" is such a
downer that the movie feels more like a depressing wallow than a well-rounded biography. There is exactly one laugh in the entire movie: After imposing on downstairs neighbor Michael Gambon for a
favor, Paltrow apologetically says, "You must think I'm a crazy American bitch." He replies, "Actually, I thought you were Canadian."
Also, I have to mention that there is a short and wholly gratuitous nude shot of Gwyneth sitting primly on a couch in a "Little Mermaid" pose, perky breasts fully exposed, that is the kind of thing
for which "pause" buttons were invented.
Other than that, "Sylvia" doesn't have much to offer your basic red-blooded, poetry-hatin' American male. Which I'm sure comes as a real surprise, huh?
Back Row Grade: C-
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