Jack Goes Boating is the directorial debut for Philip Seymour Hoffman. The film is based on a play by Robert Glaudini (a play I know nothing about) and focuses on one really unlikeable guy and his efforts to date an unlikeable women after they're set up by an unlikeable couple.
Jack (Hoffman) is a New York loser who drives a livery cab. His best friend and fellow driver is Clyde (John Ortiz), who is married to Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega). The two take care of Jack to some degree, always thinking of him and his happiness (because he is not at all happy). Lucy decides to set Jack up with a new co-worker of hers, Connie (Amy Ryan), who is almost as much of a loser as Jack is.
The two meet and sorta don't really hit it off, but also have no other options, so they begin to date and fuck. From there a series of events happen that set the four-some off on a crazy spiral of dissatisfaction and loathing.
Throughout the film, it was unclear to me if it was really a film about terrible people, or if it was just a film about people who I found to be terrible. At first it was off-putting to watch a movie and realize that I could identify with nobody and didn't even want to spend time with any of them. Over time, though, I felt as though I dropped completely into this world of jerks and losers and that was merely the texture on the wall. I ultimately found the characters to be pretty interesting, beneath their unsavory surfaces.
More than anything, this is a really well directed film and shows that Hoffman could really have a future as an interesting artist behind the camera. At several moments, he framed shots really interestingly and inventively. The first scene has Jack and Clyde sitting in their town-cars talking, but it is shot with such a long lens that the space surrounding their heads fades out of focus. They seem to be facing one another, but are somehow both behind the wheels of their respective cars. Ultimately we see a wider shot that shows they had merely parked their cars so the drivers' windows were next to each other. This is a subtle thing, but very clever and nontraditional.
I think the script is what really got between me and the emotional content of the story. The story is a bit boring and goes off into directions that are too symbolic and not naturalistic enough (considering the realistic nature of the movie). There's a whole section about Clyde teaching Jack to swim and Jack and Connie going boating (ergo the title) that never really connect to the otherwise interesting interpersonal drama.
I guess this is like complaining about there being too much mafia in The Godfather, but I think there's some really good stuff here and then some stuff that is not so good. I think a re-write of the script and a re-thinking of the whole concept would have left us with a better result.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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