Loose Ends
It occurs to me that I’ve never said anything about three movies that I saw last month, in at least one case on the same day as a movie that I did write up. They were: No Reservations, The Bourne Ultimatum, and The Nanny Diaries. These were all films that I wanted to see – and so did Kathleen, so she clawed out the time to go. I remember that, after The Bourne Ultimatum, she suggested that we have lunch at the Lexington Candy Shop. where the menus announced that two films had been shot there: The Day of the Condor, which of course we knew about, and The Nanny Diaries. Intrigued, and wondering why I hadn’t seen anything about The Nanny Diaries, I went straight to the Video Room and made a fool of myself with a short clerk who can’t stand me by asking for the DVD. The movie hadn’t even come out.
Of the three, The Nanny Diaries most deserved a write-up, if only because it seemed so wildly misjudged by the critics, who didn’t think that Scarlett Johansson was right for the part. Neither Kathleen nor I could understand that; she seemed perfect. And she was a natural foil for Laura Linney, who can do repression so well that you feel sorry for her proper women who believe that it is vital to play by the rules. Ms Johansson’s nanny was adorably flaky, not about her job but about her future. And the kid, played by Nicholas Reese Art, was adorable, too. Kids usually aren’t. Not to me. (See below.)
What’s there to say about a movie like The Bourne Ultimatum? “Wow”? “It’s great fun”? “The acting is super”? All three statements are true. Say another word, though, and you spoil the fun for someone else.
No Reservations will be, I hope, Adam Eckhart’s breakout role. Of course, after all this time, it may be that Mr Eckhart is never going to have a breakout role. But in this film, he’s the nice guy to Catherine Zeta-Jones’s heavy. For once, there isn’t a thing that you can say against the character he plays. Mr Eckhart’s repertoire of bastards, some likeable, some detestable, appears to have kept audiences at a distance. There’s no other explanation for the fact that this great actor is not a superstar, George Clooney’s cutup cousin. No Reservations is a charming romantic comedy with dampened screwball elements – Ms Zeta-Jones, lovely as ever and here quite convincing as a thoughtful, driven chef, is simply not built for the speed of screwball. Every time they had a scene together, Mr Eckhart made Abigail Breslin a lot easier to put up with.