It's not exactly a great mystery to see why Clare Peploe's "Rough Magic" has been floating around in release limbo for the past couple of years.
One of those steeped-in-magic-and-mysticism pictures, this deliberate confusion of screen conventions quickly wears out its overly perky welcome.
Like "Wilder Napalm" and "The Linguini Incident" before it, "Rough Magic" should serve as a handy example of "now you see it, now you don't" at the boxoffice.
Bridget Fonda is Myra Shumway, a magician's assistant in 1950s Los Angeles. She hightails it to Mexico in her shiny Buick convertible when her aspiring politician fiance, Cliff (D.W. Moffett), inadvertently shoots and kills the fatherly illusionist, played by Kenneth Mars.
There she meets up with Doc Ansell (Jim Broadbent), a street huckster who sells Miracle Elixir to the townsfolk; as well as Alex Ross Russell Crowe), a world-weary newspaperman who has been dispatched by Cliff to retrieve a roll of film from Myra that implicates him in the murder.
Of course, Alex ends up falling for the unwitting Myra, but not before she encounters a powerful Mayan sorceress (Euva Anderson), who endows her with the ability to lay giant tarantula eggs, turn annoying men into sausages and bestow on dogs the gift of speech, among other talents.
Peploe, who based her fractured fable on James Hadley Chase's "Miss Shumway Waves a Wand" (with an assist from William Brookfield and Robert Mundy), is obviously a big fan of the novel, but it would have been better left unfilmed. The story's flights of fancy work more effectively on the printed page, where the reader's imagination can take over. On the screen, they're self-consciously precious and grow rapidly tiresome.
The leads are similarly out of kilter. Dressed and coiffed to resemble, say, Veronica Lake and Joseph Cotten, Fonda and Crowe have the looks down but little of the substance or pulp. Old pro Jim Broadbent fares better as the Sydney Greenstreet-esque quack, while funnyman Paul Rodriguez scores some character points as a slimy thug who gets his just deserts.
Visually, the picture hits its requisite marks with some strong period production design from Waldemar Kalinowski and costume design from Richard
Hornung. DP John J. Campbell does some nice things with bright light that help conjure the magical realism.
ROUGH MAGIC
Goldwyn distributed through Metromedia Entertainment Group
UGC Images and Recorded Picture Company
present
in association with Martin Scorsese
A UGC Images production
A Clare Peploe film
Director:Clare Peploe
Producers:Laurie Parker and Declan Baldwin
Screenwriters:Robert Mundy and William Brookfield & Clare Peploe
Based on the novel "Miss Shumway Waves a Wand" by: James Hadley Chase
Executive producers:Yves Attal, Jonathan Taplin, Andrew Karsch
Director of photography:John J. Campbell
Production designer:Waldemar Kalinowski
Editor:Suzanne Fenn
Music:Richard Hartley
Costume designer:Richard Hornung
Color/stereo
Cast:
Myra Shumway:Bridget Fonda
Alex Ross:Russell Crowe
Doc Ansell:Jim Broadbent
Cliff Wyatt:D.W. Moffett
Magician:Kenneth Mars
Diego:Paul Rodriguez
Diego's Wife/Tojola:Euva Anderson
Running time -- 104 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13...
One of those steeped-in-magic-and-mysticism pictures, this deliberate confusion of screen conventions quickly wears out its overly perky welcome.
Like "Wilder Napalm" and "The Linguini Incident" before it, "Rough Magic" should serve as a handy example of "now you see it, now you don't" at the boxoffice.
Bridget Fonda is Myra Shumway, a magician's assistant in 1950s Los Angeles. She hightails it to Mexico in her shiny Buick convertible when her aspiring politician fiance, Cliff (D.W. Moffett), inadvertently shoots and kills the fatherly illusionist, played by Kenneth Mars.
There she meets up with Doc Ansell (Jim Broadbent), a street huckster who sells Miracle Elixir to the townsfolk; as well as Alex Ross Russell Crowe), a world-weary newspaperman who has been dispatched by Cliff to retrieve a roll of film from Myra that implicates him in the murder.
Of course, Alex ends up falling for the unwitting Myra, but not before she encounters a powerful Mayan sorceress (Euva Anderson), who endows her with the ability to lay giant tarantula eggs, turn annoying men into sausages and bestow on dogs the gift of speech, among other talents.
Peploe, who based her fractured fable on James Hadley Chase's "Miss Shumway Waves a Wand" (with an assist from William Brookfield and Robert Mundy), is obviously a big fan of the novel, but it would have been better left unfilmed. The story's flights of fancy work more effectively on the printed page, where the reader's imagination can take over. On the screen, they're self-consciously precious and grow rapidly tiresome.
The leads are similarly out of kilter. Dressed and coiffed to resemble, say, Veronica Lake and Joseph Cotten, Fonda and Crowe have the looks down but little of the substance or pulp. Old pro Jim Broadbent fares better as the Sydney Greenstreet-esque quack, while funnyman Paul Rodriguez scores some character points as a slimy thug who gets his just deserts.
Visually, the picture hits its requisite marks with some strong period production design from Waldemar Kalinowski and costume design from Richard
Hornung. DP John J. Campbell does some nice things with bright light that help conjure the magical realism.
ROUGH MAGIC
Goldwyn distributed through Metromedia Entertainment Group
UGC Images and Recorded Picture Company
present
in association with Martin Scorsese
A UGC Images production
A Clare Peploe film
Director:Clare Peploe
Producers:Laurie Parker and Declan Baldwin
Screenwriters:Robert Mundy and William Brookfield & Clare Peploe
Based on the novel "Miss Shumway Waves a Wand" by: James Hadley Chase
Executive producers:Yves Attal, Jonathan Taplin, Andrew Karsch
Director of photography:John J. Campbell
Production designer:Waldemar Kalinowski
Editor:Suzanne Fenn
Music:Richard Hartley
Costume designer:Richard Hornung
Color/stereo
Cast:
Myra Shumway:Bridget Fonda
Alex Ross:Russell Crowe
Doc Ansell:Jim Broadbent
Cliff Wyatt:D.W. Moffett
Magician:Kenneth Mars
Diego:Paul Rodriguez
Diego's Wife/Tojola:Euva Anderson
Running time -- 104 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13...
- 5/30/1997
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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