‘Men of Honor’ fails to do justice to subject

loading...

In theaters

MEN OF HONOR. 128 minutes, R, directed by George Tillman Jr., written by Scott Marshall Smith.

At the core of George Tillman Jr.’s “Men of Honor” is the moving, true story of a black man overcoming racism in the recently desegregated U.S. Navy of 1948.

If this were the gritty, harder-hitting Hollywood of the early 1970s, a time when directors and writers didn’t feel today’s enormous pressures to make a killing at the box office, that alone would have given audiences reason to attend. Indeed, it’s likely the film would have been less driven by formula and more interested in the truth of the life it depicts.

But now, in the less-truthful, whitewashed, feel-good climate of the new millennium, in which movies about racism have become soaked in the earning power of sentimentality, it should only raise a yellow flag of caution.

To be sure, “Men of Honor” is exactly the type of story today’s Hollywood loves to get its hands around and strangle with formula – not to mention with a score that tells us exactly how to feel during pivotal moments of the film.

With strings soaring and trumpets blaring, Mark Isham’s score is a drippy guidebook of emotions – a connect-the-feelings map that instructs audiences when to weep, when to get angry, when to be joyous, when to be outraged.

This sort of slumming for sadness and laughs isn’t just frustrating or insulting, but as Hollywood continues to go for the emotional jugular with thin scripts that don’t stand on their own because of poor writing or poor performances (“Remember the Titans,” “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” “Pay it Forward” and “Nurse Betty” all come to mind), it’s a device on which directors and producers are increasingly relying.

“Men of Honor” is no exception. It pulls out all the formulaic stops to punctuate the life of Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a poor Kentucky sharecropper’s son who became the U.S. Navy’s first African-American master diver.

As the film showcases with all the subtlety of a jackhammer, Brashear’s military life was hardly a bed of medals; when he first arrives at the Bayonne, N.J., diving school, none of the enlisted men will bunk with him, and his diving instructor, the sneering military stereotype Billy Sunday (Robert De Niro), reveals himself to be a cruel bigot determined to make certain he fails.

Thus begins Brashear’s fight to prove his worthiness to himself, to the Navy, to his people, and to Sunday – a setup that may have actually happened, but which is so watered down with predictability and sap, the film ultimately doesn’t honor Brashear at all.

Indeed, what it becomes is just another hopeful Hollywood blockbuster – one whose real intention is to honor timeworn Hollywood conventions about racism while digging and scratching for a few gold medals of its own.

Grade: C-

LITTLE NICKY. 93 minutes, PG-13, directed by Steven Brill, written by Adam Sandler, Tim Herlihy and Brill.

Steven Brill’s “Little Nicky” should have been sent to bed without a budget. It was, after all, sent to the studio without a script.

The film, which stars Adam Sandler as the retarded, lisping spawn of Satan (Harvey Keitel), is the hellish pits. It is so heinously bad, in fact, it makes the entire oeuvre of Sandler’s films seem like little diamonds – precious gems of nuanced, comedic performances that deserve a second glance.

Since that clearly isn’t the case, one can imagine how bad “Little Nicky” is. The film isn’t funny; with the exception of the two adolescent boys seated in front of me, both of whom seemed ready to combust with glee the moment Sandler waddled onscreen, the audience at my screening was absolutely silent.

It was as if we were all trapped in a holding cell, suffering through the obnoxious rantings of a man who not only refuses to grow up, but who has become so complacent in his fame, he’s now phoning in performances worse than before.

Not that Sandler has much to do here. The film pits Little Nicky against his two brothers, Adrian (Rhys Ifans) and Cassius (Tiny Lister), both of whom have launched a plan to overthrow their father and take over Hell. It’s up to the hobbled, insecure Nicky to find his inner demons and thwart each brother, while also reacting in stupefied wonderment to the film’s never-ending barrage of raunchy jokes.

Indeed, parents should take note: “Little Nicky” may come with a PG-13 rating, but when you consider what the film does with pineapples and Adolph Hitler – not to mention what it does with the man who forms bare breasts on his head – it deserves an R.

Grade: F

On video

FANTASIA 2000. 75 minutes, G, directed by Pixote Hunt, Hendel Butoy, Eric Goldberg, James Algar, Francis Glebas, Gaetan Brizzi and Paul Brizzi. Music performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

When Walt Disney gathered his animators to create the masterpiece that would become “Fantasia,” he did so with the intention that new animated shorts would be added to the work over time.

The idea was to create a constantly changing and evolving piece of visual art, a film that would be like no other – the imagination periodically let loose within the parameters of a set piece of work.

But in 1940, when the film was released to the public, it was completely skewered by film critics. The film bombed so badly, in fact, that Disney withdrew his original plans and no new segments were ever added.

That is, of course, until earlier this year, when “Fantasia” returned to theaters as “Fantasia 2000,” a remarkable achievement in animation that carries on Walt Disney’s dream of wedding classical music to stunning visuals.

Fans of the original will be pleased to know that Mickey Mouse’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” has been retained while others have been axed in favor of seven new segments, including a magical piece on the flight of whales set to Ottorino Respighi’s “The Pines of Rome”; a terrific version of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Steadfast Soldier” set to Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Piano Concerto No. 2”; and a witty version of the story of Noah’s Ark set to Edward Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance.”

The latter piece stars Donald and Daisy Duck, which means Donald finally gets “Fantasia” billing with Mickey in a film hosted by Steve Martin, Bette Midler, James Levine, Itzhak Perlman, James Earl Jones, Angela Lansbury, Quincy Jones, and Penn and Teller.

Grade: A-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style, Thursdays in the scene, and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6.