Color Me Kubrick: Review By sthuris

Color Me Kubrick feels like a peculiar mix of arthouse and sitcom, but is not especially successful as either. John Malkovich does a stunningly good job as a con-man in the leading role and his inspired acting almost saves the movie a few times.

In the mid-90s an Englishman named Alan Conway began telling people he was the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. Conway was not deterred by Kubrick being American, nor by his own ignorance of Kubrick and of cinema, and managed to fool a large number of people into going out of their way for him. The story itself is funny, bizarre and a little frightening, but the newspaper accounts are more compelling than the version of events presented here. The full title is Color Me Kubrick: A True...ish Story, and that equivocation points to the film's biggest weakness.

Starting at some unspecified time after Conway has started masquerading as Kubrick, the picture takes us rather bumpily through a number of vignettes. We see Conway put on various accents and outfits (both of which grow more outlandish through the film) as he plays on people's hopes, only to disappoint them. A slight effort is made to link these stories, but the sense is that we witness isolated curiosities while being kept in the dark about the overall direction of events.

John Malkovich is most impressive in the lead, and the squishy, wandering dialects he dreams up are a joy to hear. Yet his character is so blandly irresponsible it is hard to wish for anything other than to be away from him. Far from being a fascinating monster, he is a small-minded liar, and that is not quite enough fuel for the trip. William Hootkins is believable and memorable in a small part as New York Times theater critic Frank Rich. Honor Blackman (best known for Goldfinger) and Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I) are wasted in tiny roles.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the movie is its depiction of the gay community. In scenes reminiscent of British sitcoms of the early 90s we see Conway in ridiculous costumes cutting a swath through a crop of lisping, queeny, preening young men. There is a strong sense that we are expected to laugh at these people simply for their gayness.

Color Me Kubrick is directed by Brian Cook, who was Kubrick's assistant director on a number of films, and there are little winks and nods to Kubrick's catalog from time to time. Much music from the soundtracks of Kubrick films is used, often presenting grandiose themes against mundane visuals to undercut the significance of events, as though they needed to be trivialized further.

The newspaper stories on this surreal case are worth digging up. The movie version does not fulfill their promise, mainly because we are not given enough reality to ground the fantasy.