Alfie (1/10)

by Tony Medley

Viacom Chairman of the Board Sumner Redstone does not suffer fools gladly. Anyone wondering why Sherri Lansing is stepping down as head of Paramount, a subsidiary of Viacom, need go no further than watching her latest release, Alfie. In the first place, anyone who would even consider remaking a mediocre film like the original should be institutionalized. The only good things the original had were Michael Caine, a hit Bert Bacharach-Hal David song, and a theme that portrayed abortion for what it really is.

The latest incarnation replaces Caine with the inadequate Jude Law, removes the abortion segment (Lansing obviously didn’t have the courage to keep that compelling, realistic story line in the movie), and moved Alfie from London to New York, while retaining his British accent. In fact, it was the abortion scene, when Caine’s Alfie got physically sick when he saw the result of the abortion, which caused him to realize “what’s it all about.” Remove that story line and there is really no reason why Alfie is suffering his attack of existential angst. Without the abortion, the premise disappears.

The result is the mother of all turkeys. There was a small, almost unknown, screening on the Paramount lot. Sumner wasn’t there, but Sherri had already tendered her resignation by the time of the screening. My guess is that her resignation was about as voluntary as Nazi General Erwin Rommel’s suicide. Evidently Alfie was the first film ever for some in the meager audience because a few actually laughed at the hackneyed line, “no good deed goes unpunished.”

That line epitomized the appalling script (Elaine Pope and Charles Shyer, who also directed). The dialogue was so bad it ruined the background music (like Sonny Bono’s The Beat Goes On), which I was trying to listen to instead of what the actors were saying. And the directing was down to the quality of the script, even shooting a nighttime scene through a filter in the daytime with shadows and all, like you see in all those black & white B movies from the ‘30s and ‘40s. I guess Sherri didn’t want to spring for the costs of lighting a night scene.

Law gives a performance that can best be described as career threatening. To think that a wimpy guy like this could attract so many beautiful women boggles my male mind. Susan Sarandon continues her apparent death wish to destroy her reputation as a competent actress. After her deplorable bar scene in Shall We Dance, in Alfie she looks like a caricature. In one scene with Law she tries to exhibit multiple emotions. It’s pitiful. Sarandon at one point in her career claimed to have the “best breasts in Hollywood.” She also said that when an actress goes topless in a film she’s always upstaged by her breasts. She must not have much confidence left in her over-50 year old saggers because, while she displays some cleavage, she only takes it all off once, but that’s when she’s in the background and her breasts are blurred too much to see. Her face must have been shot through the Doris Day filter because there’s not a line in it. After seeing her performance, one wished she had allowed her breasts to upstage her.

Adding to my dissatisfaction with this film is the constant smoking and blowing of smoke in the faces of people kissing or just talking with one another. This disgraceful paean to smoking is just another good reason for Sumner to give Sherri her walking papers.

Law is so unconvincing as a roué, the script is so juvenile, the directing is so bereft of inspiration that this thing drags on for a full one hour 45 minutes without any sustainable involvement. I was expecting something dreadful but it wasn’t that good.

November 3, 2004

The End