Rating: 1.5 Pulses
Starring: Luke Wilson, George Lopez, Radha Mitchell, Adriana Barraza, Cheryl Hines
Directed by Mark Pellington
Written by Albert Torres
Rated PG
I entertained a certain amount of hope on my way to see Henry Poole Is Here but after an hour and a half I left the theater a little ashamed of myself for having faith in the film.
On one hand, I was glad that Torres’ story didn’t pound the religious message of the film into his audiences’ collective head. While the story of Henry Poole (Wilson) was undoubtedly about the controversy a bad stucco job that looks like Jesus can create, it left enough room for other possibilities, a thing us skeptics can be thankful for.
Despite this welcome stroke of temperance, the film came up lacking in several other ways.
If you’re going to flesh out a story with flashbacks, you either have to commit to the concept and follow through, or use one brilliant flashback that answers the question. Henry Poole Is Here has two or three brief, dissatisfying flashbacks, leaving several gaps in the storyline. I know Wikipedia isn’t the most reliable source of information, but their synopsis of the film contains more back-story detail than the movie did, which leads me to believe that the editors were up to their old tricks, and cut some useful things out of the mass-released version of the film.
They would have done us all a favor if they had done away with some of the film’s extended scenes showing Henry standing alone, brooding and staring at things with overly dramatic music swelling in the background. Sorry, guys, you can’t let songs tell your whole story for you, they’re supposed to be supplemental.
While I’m on the subject of the soundtrack, the music was another complete miss on the part of the filmmakers. Either their completely obvious choices overpowered a scene or were completely absent. I found myself deciding what songs would help flesh out the empty moments while I sat in the sparsely populated audience.
I guess what frustrates me most is that the story seemed to have so much potential, and in the hands of a better director and with a little editing I think it could have made the audience think, or at least asked some important and uncomfortable questions. There was even a pretty solid cast in place, but the only actor that got her point across was Barraza (Babel) as Henry’s devout Catholic neighbor who discovers the face of the Lord in her grumpy new neighbor’s stucco. Final verdict: skip it.
