Around the Bend (2004)
If King Kong finally overcame constipation
and dropped a two ton turd on New York City, you still
wouldn't have a bigger, more forced piece of shit
than "Around the Bend," one of the worst films to
be released this year.
Writer/director Jordan Roberts spent
over a decade trying to get this script to congeal
and the long set-up time has lead to so many rewrites
that the film has just become a continuous loop of
indie film trappings and feel-good, heart- warming
contrivances. Part road trip, part treasure hunt,
part magical father/son coming together, coming of
age film, the script here is a new-age hodgepodge
comprised of such ridiculous and contrived junk that
one imagines it being gleaned from the scrapheap of
the Sundance Screenwriter's workshop and reassembled
by college film student grads with absolutely no life
experience of their own to draw upon.
And just in case the audience is
too stupid or too annoyed to understand that Roberts
is "creating" a magical and "important" life-lessons
film for his indie audience, the score by David Baerwald,
which sounds like it fell off a sound-truck at Disney,
is consistently pushed up in the mix to accentuate
just how awe-inspiring and meaningful everything is.
YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE A MAGICAL FUCKING FILM GOING
EXPERIENCE GOD DAMN IT!, the music intones. You think
we would be happy when we don't get the annoying score,
but sadly, in its place we get pointless, horribly
misused, country rock songs by Warren Zevon (who would
surely sue if he were still alive), Bob Dylan and
a plethora of really bad and boring songs by Baerwald.
The soundtrack for this film is so misplaced that
even Sherlock Holmes would throw up his hands in surrender
when trying to ascertain why it was used here.
This is awful stuff. Josh Lucas,
who up to this point has had a respectable indie career,
is so overwhelmed by the bad over-acting of Michael
Caine and the bad over-acting of Christopher Walken
that he simply melts into the woodwork here. It appears
he only took the role because, like most egotistical
bastard actors, he couldn't resist a role where he
gets to play a character with a limp. Actors eat up
shit like that. It's like cocaine to them.
And, God help him, if his overbearing,
over-exposed co-stars were not enough to make this
film suck, there's also the annoying Glenne Headly
as (I shit you not) a Dutch nanny who likes gore films.
Headly should never be allowed to do an accent in
a film. Hell, my 5 year old nephew even knows that.
She's awful here.
But the most horrific and frightening
thing in this piece of dung is newcomer Jonah Bobo,
a 6-year-old actor who mugs and prattles so incessantly
for the camera in such a "love me, love me, look at
me, look at me" sickly sweet manner that you're nearly
willing to incur the wrath of Child Protective Services
in order to have just one chance to smack the shit
out of him. This kid is the most annoying child actor
since that little girl in the Pepsi commercials with
Jack Palance's voice which made us all switch to Coke.
Please, for the love of God, someone muzzle this kid
and shoot some Ritalin directly into his veins. At
the very least, please, I beg you, never ever allow
him to get in front of a professional film camera
ever again.
But the most annoying and obvious
part of "Around the Bend" isn't the bad acting, the
atrocious kid, the sacherine music or the contrived
script... Nope, in the end it's the obvious product
placement of KFC restaurants that makes the film truly
resound as a unmitigated piece of shit. The red and
white bucket is seen so many times in the film that
one begins to wonder when Harold and Kumar are going
to show up, get high, and join the worthless cast
in munching on a bucket of friend chicken legs. Even
though Roberts claims that neither he nor the film
received one thin dime from KFC, the impression here
is that it is a product placement and the continual
appearance of the edifices only makes one more and
more sure that what they are seeing has absolutely
no relation to reality whatsoever but is, in fact,
a Hollywood film so obvious and forced that we expect
an new Areosmith or Celine Dion song at the end credits.
Notes:
The film was primarily shot in New
Mexico.
Roberts developed the script at
Sundance in the 90's.
Viewed in October 2004 as a part
of the Austin Film Festival at the Dobie Theater.
