‘All the Pretty Horses’ a pretty tame effort

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In theaters

ALL THE PRETTY HORSES. 112 minutes, PG-13, directed by Billy Bob Thornton, written by Ted Tally, based on Cormac McCarthy’s novel.

In Billy Bob Thornton’s “All the Pretty Horses,” the horses sure are purty to look at. So are the gorgeous, wide-open vistas Thornton collects like postcards and drops liberally throughout as if his movie’s success depends on them. In fact, it does.

His film, based on Cormac McCarthy’s best-selling novel of the same name, follows last year’s “Snow Falling on Cedars” in that it’s desperate to present a literal interpretation of a popular, award-winning novel. Throughout, whole pages of McCarthy’s spare, countrified dialogue (“I cain’t do it.” “Well, if you cain’t, you cain’t”) have been lifted and shoehorned into Ted Tally’s meandering script, which, when juxtaposed against the film’s stunning landscapes, manages to take all the tumble out of McCarthy’s tumbleweed.

Anthony Minghella did the job right in 1996. When he translated Michael Ondaatje’s “The English Patient” for the screen, he cut through the novel’s deeply internal landscape and labyrinthine plot to find the core of the novel’s story, which he told through rich visuals that perfectly reflected Ondaatje’s poetic use of language.

The streamlining of Ondaatje’s text and the reworking of his ideas weren’t meant to disrespect the author – Minghella simply knows film is its own medium, one that has its own rules of what works and what doesn’t.

Thornton doesn’t fare so well. Throughout his film, it’s obvious what he’s trying to do: He wants to evoke directors Sam Peckinpah and John Ford in the breathtaking shots of his Texan and Mexican landscapes. But unlike Peckinpah and Ford, Thornton doesn’t have the skill to wed those images to his story. More often, his film comes off as something packaged by another actor turned director – Robert Redford. Indeed, just as in Redford’s “The Horse Whisperer,” Thornton’s film is given to roping great gobs of pretty scenery around a dull story.

The film, which originally ran four hours before a brutal editing job severed its running time to 112 minutes, is a coming-of-age story set in 1949. It follows two cowboys – John Grady Cole (Matt Damon) and Lacey Rawlins (Henry Thomas of “E.T.”) – and the wild young man they meet on the trail, Jimmy Blevins (Lucas Black).

Damon, who looks as if he just flew in from shooting a Dentyne commercial, is wholly unbelievable as a man in search of a new life after his mother wrongfully sells the family ranch out from under him. His fresh face and impossibly white teeth are jarring amidst all the dirt. But Thomas and Black – especially Black – fare much better. At least these two don’t look as if they wish they were riding sidesaddle.

When the men cross into Mexico and Cole and Rawlins find work at a Mexican horse ranch, trouble brews when John Grady meets Alejandra (Penelope Cruz), the wealthy ranch owner’s saucy daughter. Since Alejandra is forbidden by her aristocratic father (Ruben Blades) to mix with the help, she naturally decides to get naked with John Grady and fall head over hooves in love with him. Predictably, gunfire is traded, long faces fill the screen, and the movie becomes a horse opera so unrelentingly schmaltzy with the soaring of 10,000 violins, the studio would have been better off turning this whole project into glue.

Grade: C-

On video

BATTLEFIELD EARTH. 117 minutes, PG-13, directed by Roger Christian, written by Corey Mandell and J.D. Shapiro, based on the novel by L. Ron Hubbard.

Save your money! Save your time! Save yourselves! Roger Christian’s “Battlefield Earth” puts audiences directly under attack with a film that’s so mind-bendingly awful, disjointed and weak, it feels as if it were written, produced, directed and acted by a bunch of hillbilly, trailer-trash troglodytes. And I’m being kind.

Based on L. Ron Hubbard’s novel, “Battlefield Earth” easily was the worst film of 2000. It’s a cosmic wasteland of pockmarks and potholes, featuring characters so grotesque, their green, grinning mouths and rotten teeth so dirty and furry and vile, the only way to counter the staggering effect of their foul, grunting presence is to mainline penicillin midway through.

This movie wouldn’t entertain a monkey. Everybody involved either looks like Doris Duke five years in the grave or like Milli Vanilli cross-pollinated with Loretta Young. You can imagine how unsettling that is.

When people weren’t noisily getting up to walk out at my screening last May, some paused long enough to gape in horror at the film’s unfathomable dialogue, a sampling of which would curl a Hun’s toes: “If Man Animal prefers his rat uncooked, that makes our job that much easier!” Mine, too, buddy.

The film stars John Travolta in the lead, but what was he thinking to star in this? Yes, Travolta is nuts about Scientology, the religion founded by Hubbard. But is he so blinded by his faith that he’d agree to star in a film that makes “Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” look like the film of the last century? Apparently so.

Still, here he is barking out orders as Terl, an evil alien from planet Psychlo who sports a headful of dusty dreadlocks, dirty ropes of twine spooling out of his dirty nose, and massive clawlike hands that look exactly like something you’d find at Spencer Gifts around Halloween.

Cheap doesn’t begin to describe the film’s special effects, but they’re gold compared to the mucky plot, which lands with a thud in the year 3000.

As the film opens, humans are an endangered species and Earth is being stripped of its natural resources by the evil Psychlods. Will the humans, led by Jonnie “Goodboy” Tyler (Barry Pepper), be able to rise up against and thwart the Psychlods? What do you think? If this film were an intentional homage to Ed Wood, all could have been forgiven.

But it’s no homage. It’s just bad. Bad bad. So bad, in fact, that it vindicates Ed Wood’s entire career while managing to bury itself 6 feet under our terribly embarrassed, battle-stricken Earth.

Grade: F-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style and Thursdays in the scene.

The Video Corner

Renting a video? NEWS film critic Christopher Smith can help. Below are his grades of recent releases in video stores.

Battlefield Earth – F-

Coyote Ugly – C-

Disney’s The Kid – B+

Me, Myself & Irene – C+

Autumn in New York – F

Hollow Man – C-

The Art of War – F

The Exorcist: The Version

You’ve Never Seen – A

Godzilla 2000 – B+

The Cell – B

Road Trip – D-

Saving Grace – A-

Where the Money Is – C+

The Virgin Suicides – B+

Loser – C-

The Road to El Dorado – B-

Shower – B+

Scary Movie – B-

Shaft – B+

Gone in 60 Seconds – D

Groove – B-

Nutty Professor II:

The Klumps – C+

Trixie – D+

The In Crowd – F+

The Replacements – D

Chicken Run – A

Gladiator – B-

X-Men – C

Big Momma’s House – B

Boys and Girls – C-

Fantasia 2000 – A-

The Perfect Storm – A

Pokemon: The Movie

2000 – D+

Mission: Impossible 2 – B+

Titan A.E. – B-

Frequency – B