The Shipping News: Review By B. Alan Orange

Code Orange Alert #39646: The Shipping News

Ahem.

Wait for it...Judi Dench. Did that have the same effect on you? Did you experience multiple convulsions in a wave of nauseating skin tremors? Just the way "Dench" hits at the spinal column in shivers of hot sweat has me cupping my hand over any incoming mouth about to spray it. Each letter of her name spirals in the air and penetrates the flesh like a cluster of bullets shot simultaneously out of a Gattling cannon. She's the powdered donut a Freemason shoves in your mouth after a night of binge drinking; a fistful of fire punching you in the gut until you vomit out the seam of your stomach lining.

The Shipping News excels at taking you places no other audience friendly feel-good film would have the audacity to go. First, we get to watch that old hag pull down her pants and sh*t in a hole; screen behavior befitting a dame, no? Then, if that little tilt and slide hasn't rendered you sightless, you're treated to a wide-eyed view of this clumbering prude coldly sharing a bed with her lesbian lover. Nudity? The News isn't that mean. It's a relentless dip into cruelty, sure; yet it saves us from any senior-discount clam digging about to play itself out on screen.

Movieweb's Webmaster B. doesn't know this, but I was scheduled to behold the flickering flash frames of the Dench-heavy flick Iris last weekend. I ditched that sinkhole, instead getting squeezed in a cop sting that ended with a fat man screaming, "Satan sponsors crutches for handicapped kids." Two weeks in the hole with nothing but cheese sandwiches and orange-flavored water had to beat the suffering associated with Judi as an Alzheimer's patient painfully trying to recall her past life as a skanky call girl (who looked an awfully lot like Kate Winslet).

Alas, my stay of execution was to be short-lived. No sooner was I reveling in my dodge-ball like agility in sidestepping the discomfort of that tea and crumpets yawnfest; those bitches were pumping out another one. This time my wrist would be handcuffed to the cup holder chair, "It's a smaller film. Forget about Ali, you'll do this instead. And you'll like it." Yeah, I like the Shipping News a little bit more than having too squeeze a dead rodent out of my anus after listening to its muffled screams of horror as my ass-cheek muscles collapse it's bone structure. It's a slim margin, though.

What is it with Irwin Winkler and houses? This is his second film (this time as producer) in a year that's dealt with the closed-in symbolism of a man and his wreck of a living space. Life as a House worked in simultaneously showcasing a man's deconstruction and rebirth while his beachfront property went through similar changes. Kevin Kline tore down his garage-door shack and built a beautiful stateside manor in its place. Between jerking out nails and stapling his skin to wood beams, he also had time to abolish a ridiculous relationship with his ex-wife and his kid, resurrecting that all-powerful emotion, "Love", in its place.

The Shipping News works off similar themes. It's a "What-If" version of its predecessor. "What-If" Hayden Christensen's character hadn't reunited with his father before that Hollywood-style cancer ate his bowels in a means to scare Kline into heaven? Then Hayden grew to be a shallow, timid man burdened by his late father's abusive ways?

Here, we have Kevin Spacey, a man whose back-story closely resembles that of the house he has come to live in. Stationed on an out of the way glacier in Newfoundland, this two-story domicile of chipped green paint has been unmercifully hand-dragged a great distance. To weather the innumerable storms of its snowbound country, it's been bolted to the ground. One day, the rock-secured latches give-way and the house is blown into a shower of shingles that litter the icy landscape.

Spacey's Quoyle has also been dragged a great distance. His emotions are bolted to the ground; he is unable to break free from his past. After an hour and forty-minutes of in-depth self-discovery, shackles are pulled-up from the dirt of his soul and he is able to blow away in the wind. Rubbish. Winkler must have a sudden hard-on for Home Depot and its stockyard of 2x4s. There are no hidden messages buried deep in the skin of his artwork. Everything plays on the surface like decorative frosting. The Shipping News literally drowns in heavy-handed metaphor, slapping its viewer in the face like a relentless sh*t-f*ck hell-bent on making you swallow a handful of bloody c*m. It's the color of strawberry Quick and it tastes like salty shampoo.

Based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel, each of its characters is a unique construct steeped in the kind of morose problematic idiosyncrasies that you'd find in a wordy paragraphical textbook profile. The beginning is off; it's an uneven mess. Spacey walks through his role in lazy suspiration, mumbling the whole way. He hooks up with an astringent Cate Blanchet, who looks rather whorish in purple lipstick and fishnet stockings.

They get married on the fly, have a kid, then settle into a routinely dysfunctional family life. After years of mentally abusing gnat-for-hire Spacey, an ink setter, dishrag hooker in training Blanchet sells their daughter into white slavery moments before driving off a bridge in a convertible. Nothing compares to seeing Cate's blue flesh being fished from those icy waters except, maybe, seeing Katie Holmes' dead titti*s flopping along the muddy banks of the Gift. This prologue is rather free flowing in a tight five-minute package; it grudgingly disregards the overall tone of the picture. These opening moments land like a phonebook; it's full of low-level cheesy-ness that almost chokes on self-parody. The Shipping News is too trashy to have any lasting effect, yet you can feel that sentimental life-affirming messages are afoot.

Soon, Quoyle and his daughter are being dragged off to Newfoundland by butch-dyke Dame Dench (Quoyle's Aunt), who was raped at age 12 by her own brother, Quoyle's vituperative dad. Yeah, incestual relationships also play in figuring us toward an ending that exercises little weight in justifying itself. Much of the movie gives into Spacey's journey of inner-importance. At once, the film wants to be about his keen ability to write obscure blurbs for the local newspaper. Never having typed a sentence in his life, he proves to have talent for community minutiae. He shamelessly knocks out a piece on Hitler's boat, winning a column for himself. Great, we've got the Rocky of small town press.

Once we realize the guy can do something important, TSN trades its keystroking story line for romance. Julianne Moore is the insular widow with the messed up doof of a kid. We can all see where this hackneyed plot is going. Please, somebody get me the Hell out of here. When do these Whirly Bird Newspaper people have time to write? They're all so busy falling out of boats and eating seal-flipper pie on moonlit drives, it seems impossible that their's is a daily rag.

Spacey is the real disappointment here. He looks more disinterested in the material than I could ever be. Watch him in the scene were he revels to Dench he knows of her rape and abortion. As an actor, he isn't listening to her. He's reciting lines in a numbed-out evacuation of meaningless words. Sighs come heavy when you mention the Spacey name. He can do no wrong; he's so wonderful. F*ck that. He's extremely indolent in the role of Quoyle. His "falling down drunk" scene is an embarrassment. An over the top moment of unbelievability. I can't sit through this.

Where are the pirates, huh, Fonzie?

I?ve got to watch my back. I can't keep giving in to these moments of idiocy. There has to be something more. I need substance, not page regurgitation in haste. Please, wake me when Eight Legged Freaks hits the screen. Until then, I'm going to take a long, well deserved nap.

PS - You're a jackass.