Biopicorama

Was 2004 the year of the biopic or what? In the last month, I’ve seen 3 great ones- The Aviator, Kinsey, and Ray. The Aviator was terrific, a fascinating character study of a really unique, and odd fellow. I think Leonardo DiCaprio’s acting skills usually get overshadowed by his good looks and popular persona, but there’s no question the boy can act. Did you ever see him as a kid in This Boy’s Life? He went toe-to-toe with Robert DeNiro and held his own. And What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? He was marvelous, stealing the show from Johnny Depp and everyone else.

Kinsey was a pretty fascinating portrait of a guy that wasn’t all that exciting. What Kinsey did with all his sexuality research was rather groundbreaking and innovative, but Kinsey the man was kind of dull. Before studying human sexuality, he was an entomologist hell-bent on collecting and categorizing half a million gull-wasps. Not the stuff of cinematic legend. But in his later years, when he realized that nobody was well educated in the matters of sex in the 1950s, he took it upon himself to create a course at Indiana University to set the record straight. It’s astounding how little grown adults knew about their own bodies at that time. The movie was written and directed by Bill Condon, who made another great biopic 5 years ago about the fellow that made the old Frankenstein movies, called Gods and Monsters.

As for Ray, I wasn’t expecting to like the movie that much. Mainly I just wanted to see it for Jamie Foxx’s performance before he won the Oscar. But dang it all if I didn’t end up enjoying the hell out of Ray. It was 2.5 hours, but the time just flew by without me ever having to look at the clock. His life story was told with so much effortless gusto and enthusiasm, I was hooked the whole way through. And the music, all of it so good and undeniably catchy, was worked into the movie seamlessly. Ray Charles certainly had his problems with infidelity and drug addiction, but it ended up being a very uplifting story. And Foxx channeled Ray so well, I sat there and never thought he was acting as or imitating a musical icon. Foxx deserves all the praise and attention he gets.

As for the WORST bipic of the year, that goes in a landslide to DeLovely. Actually, it’s in the running for worst movie of the year, too. Unlike Ray, it had a terrible time working Cole Porter’s music into the film. The writers came up with a terrible framework to show Porter’s life- as an old, decrepit man, Porter, played by Kevin Kline, is taken into a theater by some sort of supposed omniscient angel played by Jonathan Price, and the aged Porter watches his life unfold onstage before him. The whole thing was just overly contrived and clumsy. With a runtime of 2 hours, it felt more like 6. A bulk of the film is devoted to Porter being gay and gallivanting around with pretty young men while being married to a woman that loved him dearly. The whole time, he’s either having boyfriend trouble or marriage trouble, and it got tiring VERY quickly. The film had a glum air over it, and it was oftentimes difficult figuring out what year it was, where everyone was, or how much time had elapsed between scenes. It was more or less a dull, plodding, and downbeat disaster. Don’t waste your time!