Dragonfly (2002) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/
"Dragonflies were sort of her symbol. She even had a birthmark shaped like a dragonfly."
Starring Kevin Costner, Kathy Bates, Joe Morton, Ron Rifkin, Susanna Thompson, Linda Hunt. Directed by Tom Shadyac. Rated PG-13.
I don't know whether Tom Shadyac is a hack or whether he just has a fetish for maudlin, terrible scripts. He has made one good movie, and it was The Nutty Professor. I didn't mind Patch Adams so much -- Robin Williams carried me through it -- but it, too, was pretty shameless, with the bald cancer kids and the pool of noodles. Dragonfly, Shadyac's latest effort, is competently made, and sometimes even creepy, but never authentic, Hollywood claptrap from start to finish. I'm sure there have been far worse ghost stories, though the critics that ripped into this movie as if it were their last seem to think otherwise. Really, it's not so dire.
Kevin Costner, who stars in this, may be in a worse position than even Tom Shadyac. He's made two good movies in six years (out of what? Seven attempts?) and almost ruined one of them (people forget that he and his ear-shattering Boston accent were the worst things in Thirteen Days). He's actually decent here as Dr. Joe Darrow, the grieving husband of the angelically noble Dr. Susanna Darrow, killed while trying to rescue some orphans in some third-world country devastated by a mudslide. He starts to work super-long hours in the emergency room, doing anything to take his mind off his wife.
But his wife won't leave him alone. Before long, he starts seeing dragonflies, dragonflies everywhere, which creeps him out because dragonflies were his wife's personal symbol, her good-luck charm. She even had a birthmark on her shoulder in the shape of a dragonfly. Then to add insult to injury, the dying children under her care in the oncology ward return from near-death experiences with vague messages for Joe from her.
For his part, Joe gets increasingly desparate. His boss (Joe Morton) threatens to fire him if he doesn't take a leave of absence. The oncology ward staff threatens to call the police. His loyal, lawyerly neighbor (Kathy Bates) tells him to clean out the closet. But he can't get over the foreboding feeling that his wife has something to tell him, and that she's becoming desparate herself.
Whenever this movie succeeds even to some miniscule degree, it is because of atmosphere. In fact, I am surprised that Shadyac, who, to my knowledge, has never done anything like this before, is so adept at handling the ghost story atmosphere; he has the right idea, and his movie can be unsettling (although nearly every potential scare turns out to be a false alarm; he's not working with much). It's also rarely boring, with the efficient movie mill story machine grinding its gears at every turn. But this may not be true for everyone; I'm rarely bored at ghost stories.
At the same time, I was constantly aware that not a single line or moment or plot twist in Dragonfly was real. Everything is meant to tug at your heartstring, to have this or that specific effect on you. Everything the characters speak has been run up the committee flagpole, and thus everything is phony. I will admit that the ending makes logical sense -- it would have been irreperably dumb if Susanna had tried so hard to contact Joe just for the hell of it, or to tell him that she loves him -- but that, too, is designed to give you warm fuzzies and, as such, it made me cringe.
Dragonfly is hardly excruciating, but it's pretty turgid stuff, hardly removed from the likes of Patch Adams, and not much of a leap forward for director Shadyac. It doesn't have the pretense of being a great film, but it doesn't realize that it's the stuff of daytime soaps.
Grade: C+
Up Next: We Were Soldiers
Copyright 2002 Eugene Novikov
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