McKay Dominates a Marvelously Entertaining Welles
There comes a point early on in Richard Linklater’s (Before Sunset) latest opus Me and Orson Welles where I knew I was going to love it whether or not the story panned out into anything interesting or not. A pre-Citizen Kane Welles (Christian McKay) started asking young teenager Richard Samuels (Zac Effron) rapid fire questions concerning his singing ability, his knowledge of Shakespeare and his skills with a ukulele, not so much caring about the answers as he did he confidence behind them.
Christian McKay in Freestyle Releasing's Me and Orson Welles
It is a mesmerizing moment and McKay commands the screen, his presence so dominating I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. Straight away I realized his take on the imperious and egotistical Hollywood legend wouldn’t just be a high gloss impersonation but instead a mesmerizing warts and all performance for the ages. In seconds I knew this was the movie for me, and even if the idiosyncratic director dropped the ball or screenwriters Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr. didn’t quite rise to the occasion McKay’s presence was all I was going to need in order to enjoy myself.
Thankfully none of that potential bad news came to pass, and while this adaptation of Robert Kaplow’s popular piece of historical fiction is in the end rather slight and predictable its still so well constructed the resulting film is just about impossible to dislike. This movie sings to the heavens with a beguiling and whimsical grace that’s positively intoxicating, Linklater and company getting me so drunk on their 1937 Mercury Theatre cider I couldn’t help but wish they’d keep filling up my cup so I could drink more.
The story is relatively simple. Samuels is a wannabe actor who stumbles into an introduction to Welles and his Mercury gang just days before they’re to present the inaugural production. He is immediately made one of the group, cast as Lucius in the troupe’s modern day presentation of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar.” Soon he is hobnobbing with Joseph Cotton (James Tupper) and trying to romance personal secretary Sonja Jones (Claire Danes), all the while learning under the great Orson Welles wing as to what it truly means to be an actor and celebrity.
There aren’t a lot of surprises here. At its heart, Me and Orson Welles is a rather straight forward coming of age comedic melodrama about discovering what your heart truly desires. Dreams are both made and shattered, and while none of what transpires is earth shattering there isn’t any reason that I can think of as to why it needed to be. This is nothing more than an exceedingly simple story told with both passion and skill, Linklater setting the perfect tone right from the start and never once wavering from maintaining it.
What is a surprise is McKay’s performance. While I sound a little like a broken record, what the man does here is nothing less than masterful. I’ve seen plenty of great impersonations of Orson Welles and yet I’ve never seen any of them come remotely close to this. I was completely unprepared for McKay’s multifaceted and supremely layered brilliance, the man spinning such a stupendous web getting stuck within it is an absolute joy. I was totally captivated by him, and whenever the movie went away from Welles all I could do was wait in breathless anticipating for him to return.
While I don’t want to besmirch the performances of the rest of the cast, all of whom are just fine (Effron, in particular, really does prove he’s graduated from “High School Musical” to bigger and better things), I will say none reach anywhere near the same heights as McKay. While they do try, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was his world and they were just lucky to be living in it, and even when some of the weaker moments gave me a bit of trouble (Richard’s sudden indignation to Welles’ narcissism struck me as a wee bit forced and cliché) I was so enraptured with the actor’s performance these problems instantly became unimportant afterthoughts.
I love the fact that Linklater never goes in the directions you expect him to, Me and Orson Welles just another example of this filmmaker’s willingness to play in a variety of genres and cinematic styles that both challenge and excite him. While I can’t say it’s the best film he’s ever made I will admit it’s one of his most entertaining. Combined with McKay’s sensational – and Oscar-worthy – performance this movie might even be worth a standing ovation, its run at my own personal DVD multiplex virtually assured the very moment it is offered up purchase.
Film Rating: êêê (out of 4)
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