Juneau the film stinks?
By JOHN CRAWFORD
Scene Movie Critic
What is wrong with sports movies nowadays?
Recently, Kevin Costner left behind postmen and $175 million water flicks and returned to what he does best: baseball movies. Unfortunately, "For the Love of Game" found Costner still in full romantic, "Message in a Bottle"-mode. Instead of baseball, viewers get baseball and two hours of mushy, bad romance fitting for a Jackie Collins novel.
Now there is "Mystery, Alaska," a movie about hockey, two rocky marriages, a strained father-son relationship, several melodramatic courtroom scenes, an old flame returning to his high school sweetheart, a shooting and a commentary against corporate America.
What's going on here? Can't a sports movie just be about, well, sports?
Perhaps "Jerry Maguire" is to blame for this mess. The Tom Cruise hit had something for everyone, successfully blending romance and sports into one movie. Guys could dig the football scenes. Women could get teary-eyed about a single mother and her cute kid. In a sense, it was the greatest date movie ever made.
In its wake, however, have come several unimpressive sports films, the most recent of which is "Mystery, Alaska."
The new film, starring an excellent but wasted ensemble cast that includes Russell Crowe and Burt Reynolds, is set in a small town where hockey is life. Against a backdrop of mountains, sky and snow, it is a place where children grow up with hockey sticks and everything stops for the weekly Saturday game.
Baked potatoes aren't just eaten, but used to mark out plays and to warm boots before playing outside in the cold. Couples have sex while watching games on television, and one character even explains he likes to play hockey and fornicate because they're the best two things to do in cold weather.
The film gets started when a magazine article spotlights the town's hockey mania, and the New York Rangers decide to play the local team in an exhibition game. Suddenly, the ragtag Mystery team, a motley crew composed of a grocer, a deliveryman, the town sheriff and a dim-witted high school kid, is pitted against the big, bad professionals of the National Hockey League. It's a classic David versus Goliath showdown.
So far so good, right?
But then everything disintegrates into a number of unnecessary and badly-scripted subplots. The team's captain (played by Crowe), in the clichéd role of the aging athlete, is jealous of his wife (Mary McCormack), who seems infatuated with a former high school boyfriend (Hank Azaria) who has returned to the small town.
The town mayor (Colm Meaney) finds out his wife (Lolita Davidovich) is having an affair, though the two eventually kiss and make up. The team's coach (Reynolds), who spends much of the movie brooding, must patch things up with his estranged son (Scott Grimes).
A corporate giant also threatens to come to town, but its representative (Michael McKean, probably best known for playing Lenny on "Laverne and Shirley") is shot by the proprietor of the local general store in a plot line that is introduced and quickly forgotten.
Did someone forget about the hockey game?
Perhaps this hodgepodge of a movie is the result of the weird contrast of talents behind the lens. Jay Roach, who directed both "Austin Powers" movies, serves as director. Meanwhile, it's producer and co-writer is David Kelley, the force behind a number of current popular television dramas, including "Ally McBeal," "Chicago Hope" and "The Practice." It is perhaps Kelley's infatuation with the law, so evident in his television shows, that results in "Mystery" having several unrealistic and melodramatic courtroom scenes that turn this hockey movie, for a brief time, into an episode of "Perry Mason."
The film is not without some bright spots. One highlight is a cameo by Mike Myers, playing a TV commentator, in a role that generates almost as many laughs in just five minutes as his flat "Austin Powers" sequel.
The end also has a strange surreal feeling as Little Richard shows up, complete with makeup and a robe, to sing the national anthem before the big game.
Unfortunately, Richards is a little too late to help this plodding mess of a movie. If you're looking for an uplifting tale of an underdog facing adversity that's free of unwanted courtroom melodrama, falling-apart romances and estranged father-son relationships, rent "Rocky" instead.
All Scene Stories for Thursday, January 20, 2000
