Thanks to rampant emoting, ‘Empire’ falls hard

And I thought “Thinner” was bad.

I guess you have to watch movies made in your area, no matter how bad they are. “Empire Falls” was not worth the effort. The HBO miniseries, aired last week, put the “mini” back in miniseries. What a (31/2-hour) dud.

At least “Thinner,” filmed in Camden a decade ago, had Port Clyde’s Eddie Black playing the king of the gypsies. Now that’s theater.

You just had to watch “Empire Falls,” since it was written by Camden’s Richard Russo and it brought Paul Newman (nine nominations, two Oscars), Ed Harris (two nominations), and Helen Hunt (Oscar) to Lincolnville in the summer of 2003. Like a dummy, I sat around all day to watch the crew and wrangle a free meal off ace P.A. (that’s production assistant to those not in the biz) Peter “Big Pete” McDonald of Charlestown and Camden.

McDonald tells everyone about his legendary fog in “Con Air.” Claims it set an industry standard.

Since I am too cheap to pay for HBO, I had to borrow the review copy from the Camden Herald’s David Grima. I thought Grima was charitable when he compared the effort to soap operas and “Peyton Place,” that racy ’50s classic that was filmed in Camden and California back lots.

The comment was echoed the next day in the Globe when columnist Matthew Gilbert invoked “Peyton Place,” called it “bleak melodrama,” and an “acceptable” soap opera. He said, “Almost all of the dialogue is overwrought with past tragedy.”

Actually, the two reviews were so similar that Grima e-mailed Gilbert, semi-seriously raising charges of plagiarism. The disagreement was settled out of court.

At the one-hour mark, “Empire” reminded me of “Gunsmoke” when it expanded from 30 minutes to an hour with apparently the same scripts. We used to watch Miss Kitty with her soapy beer for three minutes before she would say anything to Matt and Festus to stretch out the dialogue.

“Empire” was three hours, 30 minutes long and could have easily been trimmed by a minimum of 45 minutes.

At the two-hour mark, it amazed me that outrageously talented actors such as Newman and Joanne Woodward (three nominations, one Oscar) can sit down and look at the daily rushes and not know that it was time to move on to the next project.

Woodward, one of my all-time favorites, was probably the worst actor in the film. She was supposed to be the villain, but you didn’t even get mad at her. You didn’t even care when she died. (Did I give something away?)

It was like Jon Lovitz doing a “Saturday Night Live” imitation of Joanne Woodward.

It seems to me that bad acting spreads like a disease in a movie or play. If everyone is off, then no one notices. Helen Hunt (Oscar) was bad.

Only Newman labored mightily to bring a little humor to the proceedings. Estelle Parsons, as the bar owner with a heart of gold, was all right, but every once in a while, she remembered that she was supposed to be in Maine and fractured the Hollywood version of Mainespeak. Hunt’s accent came and went without warning.

When it comes to the silver screen, it appears that Maine will have to satisfy itself with “In the Bedroom” which was filmed in Rockland in 2001 and should have won Oscars for Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson. Both were nominated. (They wisely avoided the Maine accent thing altogether.)

At the three-hour mark of “Empire,” I wondered why I was bothering. Then I remembered the Lincolnville scene I witnessed. I sat through the whole damned thing to see the very last scene with Harris and Danielle Panabaker (who plays Tick) sitting on a car at the ferry terminal talking about making your heart behave.

It wasn’t worth the wait.

But we will always have Eddie Black in “Thinner.”

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.