Script stifles performances in ‘Welcome to Mooseport’

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In theaters

WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT, directed by Donald Petrie, written by Tom Schulman, 110 minutes, rated PG-13.

“Welcome to Mooseport” is set in Maine, but that’s no reason to see it. The movie is that rare moviegoing event in which you could actually save yourself the eight bucks by looking out a window. Whatever the view there, it likely will be more compelling than what’s tossed onto the screen here.

As directed by Donald Petrie from a script by Tom Schulman, “Welcome to Mooseport” is a high-concept, feature-length sitcom almost completely devoid of laughs. Its cast is appealing – that’s its hook -but its predictable story is such a lazy tumble of cliches that it never takes off to meet expectations.

The movie stars Ray Romano as Handy Harrison, a plumber in a small, seaside town that might have recalled Kenne

bunkport if it weren’t for the crowds of colorful, folksy stereotypes buzzing about town.

For instance, there’s the nude jogger, who inexplicably runs through Mooseport’s busy, picturesque streets during the film’s opening credits without one person raising an eyebrow or the local law enforcement dragging him off to jail.

Instead, everyone here – all of them warm, smiling Mainers dressed in their L.L. Bean best – cheerfully waves good morning to him as if this were a nonevent. As such, the story hasn’t even begun and already it’s on shaky ground.

It never recovers.

The film revolves around Handy’s relationship with two people – his headstrong, long-time girlfriend, Sally (Maura Tierney), who wants the commitment-shy Handy to pop the question so they can formally start their life together, and the former president of the United States, Monroe “The Eagle” Cole (Gene Hackman), who has returned to Mooseport to reside in his summer house during the messy divorce from his soon-to-be ex-wife Charlotte (Christine Baranski).

With Charlotte angling for more money, Cole decides to stick it out in Mooseport, where he is asked by the town’s bumbling officials to run for mayor.

Through a series of contrivances, Handy himself tosses his hat into the ring and “Welcome to Mooseport,” wheezing to fill two excruciatingly long hours, follows each man’s fight to win the race – as well as Sally’s affection.

Rip Torn, Marcia Gay Harden, Fred Savage and Baranski try to add life to the film’s several subplots, but only Baranski scores a few laughs toward the end, when she’s allowed some screen time. Fairing less well is Romano, who might want to hold on to his television career, and Hackman, who is skating here.

With this sort of talent involved, it’s difficult to imagine why anyone agreed to make the movie, which is killed by its script. That they did so is their problem. That they decided to set it Maine becomes, at least on some levels, our own.

Grade: D

On video and DVD

THE MISSING, directed by Ron Howard, written by Ken Kaufman, based on the novel by Thomas Eidson, 135 minutes, rated R.

In the opening scene of Ron Howard’s western, “The Missing,” Cate Blanchett, in full period drag, straddles a writhing Mexican woman, holds her down and forcibly yanks the last rotten tooth from her head.

It’s 1885 and times are tough in New Mexico, particularly for a beleaguered healer like Blanchett’s Maggie Gilkeson, a single woman raising two daughters with the help of Brake Baldwin (Aaron Eckhart), the scruffy cowpoke she loves, albeit secretly.

As played by Blanchett in one of her most rewarding and challenging roles since her breakout performance in “Elizabeth,” Maggie is a force to be reckoned with, which is a good thing since her teenage daughter, Lilly (Evan Rachel Wood), has recently been kidnapped by a band of Apaches determined to sell her and other women in Mexico.

Reminiscent of John Ford’s 1956 classic, “The Searchers,” in which John Wayne gave one of the best, most memorable performances of his career, “The Missing” conspires to reconnect Maggie with her father Samuel (Tommy Lee Jones), who abandoned Maggie as a child and who has since re-entered her life to make amends.

In spite of the cold fist of hatred Maggie feels toward him, she soon realizes she has no choice but to seek his help. As such, he joins Maggie and her young daughter Dot (Jenna Boyd) in their quest to find Lilly.

The film, which screenwriter Ken Kaufman based on Thomas Eidson’s novel, “The Last Ride,” is more claustrophobic than last year’s other western, “Open Range,” and it’s never as scenic as the films of Sam Peckinpah and Ford.

Still, it does have energy, comedy and passion, rising above the contrivances that drive it because Howard’s heart is in it so completely.

There are moments in this movie that are unshakable, such as the look that wavers across Maggie’s face when it occurs to her that she might have lost her daughter forever to the evil Chidin (Eric Schweig), or the scene in which the scores of fiery arrows hurtle through the air and sink still ablaze into the bellies of unsuspecting horses.

Howard doesn’t hold back in “The Missing,” and neither does his cast. Together, they’re a force, lifting the movie above its distracting lapses into forced mysticism and mythmaking with superlative action and acting.

Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, 5:30 p.m. Thursdays on WLBZ 2 and WCSH 6, and are archived at RottenTomatoes.com. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.