Jack Goes Boating: Ambitious But Imperfect

Philip Seymour Hoffman's directorial debut, "Jack Goes Boating," is a very odd film. I applaud Hoffman heartily for having the courage to be unusual at a time when originality is hated by audiences from coast to coast. We also need to thank Overture Films for their gutsiness in distributing a film that so goes against the grain of these moronic times at the movies. (A time when millions of people think "Avatar" was the greatest achievement in cinema in 2009.)

One of the things I love about "Jack Goes Boating" is that it's about ordinary people struggling with the things ordinary people struggle with. It's so authentic. Hoffman plays a limousine driver with about a seventh-grade education, the kind of man you see everywhere in New York. The kind of man who drives movie stars around all day. The kind of man no movie star ever notices. Hoffman notices.

Playing his best friend and fellow limo driver is John Ortiz, who is so good that he may get a considerable number of Supporting Actor nominations at the end of the year. He even may win a few. While Hoffman gets top billing, the story is almost as much about Ortiz' character, who battles with love and loneliness as much as Hoffman's character.

As the film starts, Ortiz and his girlfriend (Daphne Rubin-Vega) have set Hoffman up with Connie (beautifully played by Amy Ryan), a woman as socially inept and awkward as Hoffman's character. Initially you think the film is going to be the standard parody of extreme dorks and idiot savants. Gradually though, almost without you realizing it, the film gets deeper and more complex. In the last 20 minutes, you end up with one of the most raw and trenchant sequences depicting romantic implosion as you're likely ever to see. I was even reminded of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" From light comedy to Virginia Woolf -- how's that for surprising shifts in tone and content?!

The problem is that sometimes the extreme originality comes across arch and downright weird. It doesn't flow effortlessly at every moment. When it's at its best, "Jack Goes Boating" is an absolute feast for the mind and heart. It may not be perfect, but it's one of the most ambitious and interesting films of the year. There are still Americans making movies that are works of art! This is cause for great celebration.

"Jack Goes Boating" stands alongside "Winter's Bone" as the most artistic American films of 2010 thus far. Being artistic of course means they'll be the two films that generate the least interest among American audiences. In 2010, no one has any interest in artistic cinema. Big, stupid entertainments are all anyone's interested in at the movies today. (Another viewing of "The Expendables" anyone?) Thank heavens for directors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and Debra Granik. They remind us that not everyone in America has become an entertainment-addicted philistine choking on bubblegum.