Magnolia, PT Anderson's lumbering follow-up to the acclaimed Boogie Nights, is overlong, vapid, sometimes touching but mostly disappointing as it stylishly weaves tales of varying quality from the San Fernando Valley.
A general topic of 'family life', including neglectful parents and neglected
children, is laced with themes of machismo and coincidence and played out by
an impressive ensemble cast.
The best performances are the quietest ones; notably William H Macy as a
lovelorn has-been quiz show star, also Jason Robards and Phillip Seymour
Hoffman as a self-reproaching dying TV mogul and his nurse. Tom Cruise,
whose performance has been much commented on, is given too loose a rein as a
self-proclaimed 'masculinity guru'. It's as if he relies too heavily on
performance, having forgotten to act.
The convolutions of the stories are forgivable in the first two thirds of
the movie, but then Anderson pays homage to songwriter Aimee Mann and it's
downhill from there. A literal sing-a-long among the characters is extended
into an overscoring with Mann's music, obstructing dialogue and serving
merely to annoy. Apparently Mann's lyrics were the inspiration behind the
movie but the indulgent use of her music is often misplaced. The final of
third of the movie is where the fabric of tales is unravelled and
incorporated into an unexpected, but contrived, plot twist.
The problem is that there is no real premise behind Magnolia. So when quiz show prodigy Stanley Spector (an angelic Jeremy Blackman) says to his father, 'You have to be nicer to me', you know that this is the trite underlying message of the film.
Reviewed by Iain Tibbles
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