Juliet, Naked (2018)
Directed by Jesse
Peretz
Lionsgate, 105
minutes, R (For F-bombs?)
★★
Nick Hornsby is an interesting writer. Ethan Hawke is a
wonderful actor. But this doesn't mean that every book or film associated with
the two is a winner. Juliet, Naked is
a case in point. This is one of those films you stream on a night in which your
brain is fried and you want pure escapism.
The film takes its name from the album title of a one-hit-wonder
rock musician. We zero in on a fading beach town southeast of London, where Annie
Platt (Rose Bryne) runs the local history museum and shares an airy apartment
with her longtime boyfriend Duncan Thompson (Chris O'Dowd). Duncan is a college
professor obsessed with Tucker Crowe, a rock star who disappeared during a
concert interval 25 years earlier. Annie is fed up hearing about Crowe and her
annoyance grows deeper when someone sends Duncan an acoustic demo of Crowe's
only album, Juliet, Naked. Duncan is
analogous to diehard Deadheads who insist that everything the band did was
transcendent. Annie's listening–and she couldn't avoid it if she tried–is that
the demos are rubbish. But Duncan is into his fantasy way more than he is into
Annie.
Her response to Duncan's video blog touting the demo's
virtues is to post a comment to the site calling Crowe's music lame. Duncan is
infuriated and a sharper wedge is driven into his failing relationship with
Annie. The big surprise, though, is that Annie gets an email from Crowe himself
(Ethan Hawke) in which he agrees with every word she wrote. Tucker has no idea
that Duncan is Annie's partner and wonders who the obsessed idiot who has been
writing about him for years might be. The two begin a regular email
conversation and connections between to deepen. When Tucker tells her that he
will be flying to London to see his pregnant daughter, Lizzie (Ayoola Smart),
plans are laid to meet.
Serve some false start leftovers, drizzle with
complications, and toss in some toasted clichés and you could have written the
script; especially if you've seen Sleepless
in Seattle and Searching for Sugar
Man. Tucker's life has been such a mess that he sees his attempt to be a
good dad to 6-year-old Jackson as perhaps his last shot at redemption. This, of
course, is never true in a rom-com, but tossing in sentimental fatherhood and,
in Annie's case, empty womb essentialism are common elements for novelists and
script writers aiming for lowest common denominator mass appeal.
The overall thinness of the story is revealed in subplots
that go nowhere, such as the love life of Annie's lesbian sister Ros and
Duncan's attraction to a new colleague. There are several scenes that are as
broad as a Victorian drawing room play from a second-tier writer, such as a
particularly silly (and unlikely) hospital scene and a forced impromptu
performance from Tucker. (He sings a Kinks song.) Even the central revelation
about the identity of Juliet and the back-story of the record feels like a let
down.
There are two reasons to give the film a look: Hawke and
Bryne. Hawke plays Tucker as if he's a mix of Jeff "The Dude"
Lebowski and Cat Stevens. He's such a fine actor that he can drift through a
film and still look good, which is pretty much what he does in Juliet, Naked. Rose Bryne is radiant as
Annie. She physically embodies (undeveloped) themes of fading glory (the seaside
town, central relationships, Crowe's reputation). At age 39, the
Australian-born actress is still gorgeous, but she plays Annie with just enough
exasperation and weariness to appear haggard around her luminous edges. Like
Hawke, she needs a life refresh button before it's too late. I wish I could say
that O'Dowd was equally subtle, as the script is set up to be a
Duncan-Rose-Tucker triad. Alas, O'Dowd is all annoyance and no charm, which
taints his performance with histrionic excess.
In the end, Juliet,
Naked isn't a horrible film, but neither is it a good one. The prevailing
emotion one gets watching it is that it's all right, but should have been much
better. Like I said upfront, call this one a film for a no-heavy-thinking
evening.
Rob Weir
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