The Big White

Arvostelu on poikkeuksellisesti englanniksi, koska tarvitsen pientä touchin ylläpitoa yliopiston pääsykokeita varten.

The Big White is directed by Mark Mylod, the man behind the first Ali G movie, Ali G indahouse. His main focus, however, has recently been in TV business, directing series such as Entourage and Fast Show. While filming his second full length movie the Big White he was able to work with well renowned actors and a relatively big budget of 18 million dollars.

The film takes us to all the way to Alaska where travel agent Paul Barnell (Williams) and his wife Margaret (Hunter) struggle to make a proper living. The opportunity to get rich arises when Paul discovers a random dead body in a dumpster. He decides to cash in on his long lost brother and claims a million dollar bill from an insurance company claiming it was his brother. Everything doesn’t, however, go according to plan as Ted (Ribisi), an insurance company agent desperate for a promotion, gets suspicious. To mix things up even more, two amateur mobsters come looking for the body that Paul stole. When Paul’s supposed-to-be-dead-brother, Raymond (Harrelson), makes a surprise comeback to Alaska, the ingredients of a total catastrophe are ready.

Robin Williams, praised for his roles in Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society, fails to shine as a desperate travel agent looking for a way of curing his wife, who is suffering from Tourette syndrome. Barnell claims that his wife means everything to him and this is where Williams doesn’t succeed. Paul and Margaret’s love is the source for all the movies’ events, thus Williams’s failure to convey the desperation and love for his wife is a big loss to the overall picture of the movie. Hunter, as the sick wife, on the contrary, is everything but mediocre. His hilarious role as a mental midget is the best the film has to offer. The symptoms of Margaret’s Tourette syndrome are exploited ingeniously. Giovanni Ribisi and Woody Harrelson’s performances are quite neutral, but when it comes to the other supporting roles, it gets worse. Special mention goes to Alison Lohman for the outrageous bimbo role as Ted’s girlfriend.

Big White has many ingredients of Coen Brothers’ great classic, Fargo, and it is no secret that it tries to reach the same minimalistically humorous atmosphere than its predecessor. However it never quite gets there. The soundtrack is partly more than annoying. It’s okay for a song to be related to the current situation of the movie, but overdoing this only pisses the watcher off. You don’t necessarily want to listen to a song like “woo-ou were having a gunfight here” during a gunfight. Fortunately there are some beautiful classical compositions too.

The greatest problem of the movie is that it isn’t truly funny. Coens once had the Midas touch for making sarcastically humorous movies. Mylod’s efforts to copy Coens’ style results, however, in a dull and average movie, except for Hunter’s brilliant role.