The Good: Adrian Lester's acting, Kathy Bates' character, Occasional line of dialogue
The Bad: John Travolta, Plot, Characters, Most everything
The Basics: A huge disappointment in the crappy impression of Bill Clinton that John Travolta does, Primary Colors left me wanting the two hours, twenty-four minutes of my life back!
When I was much much younger, I got an aquarium for my birthday and I had fish for many years. At that point in my life, I wanted to be a marine biologist and my parents liked that idea. When I was twelve, I went away to a sleepaway summer camp and my parents got rid of my fish because I, in their esteemed view, hadn't been taking adequate care of them. That was their right, I suppose. Earlier this year, I was visiting my father and I got my aquarium back from him. I've put together one model in my life and my idea with all of this was, I didn't want to have to dust the model because it has fragile parts. My thought was, I would get the aquarium, clean it up, get some glass for the top and enclose the model after making a little diorama base for it. It's a good idea, but my old aquarium still has scum from that time well over a decade and a half ago when it was put in the basement.
The point to this whole story? Since I returned the aquarium to my possession and my new house, I've not gotten around to cleaning it. Removing old calcium deposits from glass is an annoying, painstaking chore. It involves using a sharp razorblade as delicate tool to scrape off the deposits and streaks and grime.
What does this have to do with the film Primary Colors? After the first forty-five minutes of this awful, awful film, I looked around my room, saw the aquarium and got out a razorblade to clean it while watching the rest of the movie. You know what? The second half of the film was no better and my aquarium finally got cleaned; I have hopes the model will soon be enshrined.
So, what's so bad about Primary Colors? First, it has John Travolta. It has John Travolta upstaging everyone else who appears in the film whom I know to be competent in other works. A perfect example would be one of my favorites, Maura Tierney. She's always upstaged by Travolta, the camera always goes from her to him and it's sad.
Second, John Travolta's character and his acting. If you were an adult during the first Bush administration back in the late 1980s, early 1990s, you might recall Dana Carvey's wonderful impersonations of George Bush. If you were even halfway astute, you might have realized that soon after Carvey's impersonation became popularized, the VAST majority of Bush impersonations became impersonations of Carvey impersonating Bush rather than actually impersonating Bush. John Travolta's character is an impression of Bill Clinton. The problem is, while he has most of the mannerisms down, he has nowhere near the charisma. Both the character and the actor fail to portray anything nearly as genuine as Bill Clinton did. Worse still is the acting; during a crucial scene near the very end, Travolta loses his Clinton-esque accent and mannerisms and delivers a speech as John Travolta. The only thing worse than his Clinton style character impersonation is Travolta being himself.
Primary Colors is an example of a turn of the old phrase "What if we threw a party and nobody showed?"; What if you had a party filled with great guests and then tied and gagged them all? The film is filled with great actors and actresses: Maura Tierney, Kathy Bates, Billy Bob Thorton, Emma Thompson, and Adrian Lester (more on him later), but they are given horrid lines, usually bland characters (most of whom are caricatures of decent people from the Clinton administration), and stuck in a tired, predictable, plodding, depressingly simple plot.
The film, quite simply, is about Jack Stanton and his rise from Southern governor and political obscurity to Democratic presidential candidate. The film focuses quite a bit on the political machinations behind his campaign as well as his relationship with his wife. The real crux of the film is the character Henry, who is enlisted to run the grassroots campaign as the movie opens. The problem is, too often the story shifts away from him and the camera focuses on Jack.
Henry is the bright spot of the movie. The shining glimmer of hope in an otherwise murky film that feels like an un-funny Saturday Night Live sketch dragged out too long. So long it doesn't even know it's dead. Henry is played by Adrian Lester and his acting makes the character. His acting allows us to overlook the oversimplified idealism shattered story that is the essence of Henry's character arc. The closest hope the film has outside Lester's exceptional work interpreting an otherwise standard character, is in the character of Libby played by Kathy Bates. She's one of those people that was a hippie back in the day, filled with idealism and still has a glimmer in her eye about the political process and the goals of her politician. It's from her character that the film's few decent lines are delivered.
The problem is her character is also corrupted beyond believability. As one of the most important events in the film nears, she declares that Stanton's choice will be a test that will either make or break her faith in him. She declares this, he fails the test and she doesn't just leave. One might argue that the action she takes is more extreme and meaningful, but I would argue that the philosophy with which she speaks about the test before the verdict comes indicates her move would simply have been to throw her allegiance to another candidate. That is to say, she speaks of such principles and the focus and diction is on a desire to have an ideal that it's too hard to suspend the disbelief for what she ends up doing. It reads wrong. Whatever the "historical truth" beyond her character might have been, the specific lines she used indicate a different action that made sense for her character to take.
The simple truth about Primary Colors is is that it is a formulaic political film and it's populated by bad everything. It's poorly written, unimaginatively directed, filled with good actors delivering bland performances; it's not funny, it's not dramatic, it's not much of anything. The only plus side I can find in the film in the final analysis is that perhaps you'll get to that project you've been putting off while watching it. I know I'm happy my aquarium is ready to have its diorama built inside it.
For other political works, please check out my reviews of:
The West Wing
Charlie Wilson's War
The Hurt Locker
2.5/10
For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!
© 2010, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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