Unbelievable ‘Next’ squanders actors’ talents

In theaters

NEXT, directed by Lee Tamahori, written by Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh and Paul Bernbaum, 96 minutes, rated PG-13.

Not one but three actors squander their talent and go for the paycheck in the new Lee Tamahori movie, “Next.” One of them is an Academy Award winner, another has been nominated four times for an Academy Award, and the other, if she continues down this road of nonsense and rot, can kiss her own chances at ever being considered goodbye.

The actors in question are Nicolas Cage, Julianne Moore and Jessica Biel, all of whom presumably read the screenplay for “Next,” and who then decided that this indeed was the right choice to move their careers forward.

Forward into what is the question, but it’s tough to work up the steam to figure out an answer – or to wonder what they were thinking when they signed onto the project.

Loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story “The Golden Man,” this movie version is just plain stupid, served with a side of stupid. It stars Cage as Cris Johnson, a third-rate Las Vegas magician whose dyed hair plugs have created such a distracting bird’s nest of a ‘do (he looks like a strung-out version of Tom Hanks in “The Da Vinci Code”), his stage name really shouldn’t be Frank Cadillac, as it is in the movie, but Mullet the Magician.

Looking gaunt and thin, his sunken eyes burning holes into the screen, Cage’s Johnson is considered, by some, to be quite a catch.

With his clairvoyant ability to see two minutes into the future, he attracts the attention of area casinos, which are tired of his uncanny winning streak, as well as by the government, with grim FBI agent Callie Ferris (Moore) determined to enlist his help to keep a group of Russians from blowing up Los Angeles with a stolen nuclear bomb.

There are a few problems with this. First, why do these Russians want to blow up Los Angeles? Did one of them have their script denied? Their hopes dashed? Never explained. Second, is the U.S. government really so weak on intelligence that they would attend Johnson’s magic shows, spend time deducing over cocktails that he has “special powers,” and then spend additional time tracking him down, because, hey, who better to turn to for help in a time of national crisis than a clairvoyant?

Okay, so it’s best not to answer that last question. Still, the movie wobbles forward, with Biel showing up as Johnson’s love interest, who becomes kidnapped by the Russians and thus is endangered in ways that only Johnson can solve.

As drama and chaos bloom around them, the script lurches illogically through the dull car chases and clumsy gunfights until it literally detonates with one of the worst, most incomplete endings in recent movie history.

Grade: D

On DVD

DREAMGIRLS, written and directed by Bill Condon, 131 minutes, PG-13.

Bill Condon’s “Dreamgirls” is a good movie, but what’s missing is the soul that could have made it a great movie. This glittering adaptation of the long-running 1981 Broadway show has fine production values and it’s enjoyable in parts, but it isn’t memorable as a whole.

Unlike our best musicals, you don’t leave the film exhilarated or spent. Instead, you leave it feeling somewhat ambivalent, with one major exception – Jennifer Hudson, who gives the film’s best, most heartfelt performance as Effie White, the brassy member of the 1960s girl group the Dreams, itself a thinly veiled version of the Supremes.

Though Hudson falls short in those scenes where her lip sync is distractingly out of sync, her undeniable talent and powerful voice nevertheless give the movie a generous lift. She deftly bulldozes over her seasoned co-stars with a rawness and a confidence that’s magnificent to behold – and which won her an Academy Award.

As you’d expect, her defining moment comes when she sings the powerhouse ballad “And I Am Telling You (I’m Not Going),” which proves to be the movie’s highlight and the story’s turning point. Just before she sings it, Hudson’s Effie was ousted from the Dreams, which includes singers Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) and her unexpected rival, Deena Jones (Beyonce Knowles, beautiful yet slight). Effie’s trouble is that she’s considered trouble, a diva with a self-destructive attitude that might bring down the group just as they’re on the cusp of stardom.

Worse for her is that her lover and the group’s manager, Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx, coasting), believes Effie is too ethnic for a country divided by the civil rights movement. And so, by turning his back on her by championing the thinner, more white-friendly Deena as the new star of the group, he essentially has turned his back on his own race.

All of this could have made for a revealing, powerful film about how blacks were treated in the music industry during the 1960s and ’70s – and how they had to strategize to be successful – but it doesn’t. Instead, Condon goes for the glitz, the glamour and the infighting, which generates its share of energy but no depth.

Working hard in a subplot is Eddie Murphy as James “Thunder” Early, a James Brown-like entertainer who is on fire as the movie begins, yet whose collapse into disillusionment and drug addiction becomes disappointingly flat when the industry turns against him. The flatness isn’t Murphy’s fault – he’s good here, particularly in early scenes – but a fault of the script, which doesn’t allow the actor to have his moment the way it absolutely allows Hudson to have hers.

Grade: B

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays and Fridays in Lifestyle, and weekends in Television as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.