There's not much than can be said about Lasse Hallstr”m's adaptation of E. Annie Proulx's best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Shipping News. Except perhaps this: for a film that's so centrally based around water, it's an awful lot like a kiddie pool -- there are a lot of personalities running around and showing off, and it's pretty damn shallow.
To attempt to explain how Hollywood managed to ruin yet another adaptation of first-rate modern literature, it is necessary to start with the film's most blatant offense -- undoubtedly, Kevin Spacey. Not only is he completely wrong for the part physically -- being of rather diminutive stature and build -- but he seems to display all the subtlety of a brick, choosing to ignore the gentle delicacy of the character in favor of a new in-your-face, ultra-obvious style. Coupled with a wavering accent and a look of constant blunt confusion, his Quoyle is wholly unrecognizable from Proulx's fragile protagonist. Frustratingly and disgracefully miscast, he appears to have joined the ranks of recent Oscar-winners, alongside Mira Sorvino and Cuba Gooding Jr, who challenge themselves to make the worst possible movies post-win.
The rest of the cast fares slightly better, but ultimately fails as well because of paper-thin characterization. Julianne Moore's washed-out beauty finds a perfect companion in the weathered skies and rocks of Newfoundland, but her role is so thinly-defined that she is effectually useless. Judi Dench and Scott Glenn run into similar trouble, forced to play each sequence as though intended for the local Midwestern multiplex, reducing their complex roles to merely advancing the plot. The only vital signs come from the always magnificent Cate Blanchett, in her third literary adaptation of the winter, whose Petal is appropriately full of rancor and life, and, surprisingly, from Jason Behr, best known for UPN's sci-fi teen drama Roswell; unfortunately, the two add up to perhaps fifteen minutes of screentime.
Robert Nelson Jacobs' script adaptation plays like a greatest-hits compilation, including all of the major plot twists from the novel, but little of the depth and growth that lead up to them, turning many scenes into inexplicable and oft bizarre incidents. Leaving the theater, it's hard to tell whether Proulx's episodic and multi-layered novel was merely too complex for a celluloid adaptation, or whether things had simply gone horribly wrong, turning what should have been a great and complex film into a mere travel advertisement for Newfoundland's rugged beauty. Whatever the reason, The Shipping News will take its place alongside Corelli's Mandolin as the worst adaptations of of 2001.
The Shipping Newsdirected by: Lasse Hallstrom starring: Julianne Moore, Kevin Spacey and Cate Blanchettrated: R Two Stars
