Monroe “Eagle” Cole (Gene Hackman,
Runaway Jury), has finished his second term as President
with the highest approval ratings ever. He retires to his home in
Mooseport, Maine
to write his memoirs, contemplate lucrative speaking appearances,
make sure his presidential library is bigger than Bill Clinton’s,
and avoid his ex-wife. His arrival coincides with the death of the
town’s mayor, and the local government asks him to take the
position. Local hardware store owner Harold “Handy” Harrison (Ray
Romano,
Ice Age) also enters the race, and complicating matters is
the competition between the two men for the attention of Handy’s
longtime girlfriend Sally Mannis (Maura Tierney, ER,
Insomnia).
CRITIQUE
Ray Romano is an experienced stand-up comedian
with significant experience on his own sitcom. Gene Hackman is one
of the most well-known actors in the world. Other cast members are
also notably talented, including Marcia Gay Harden as the
president’s secretary and advisor and Maura Tierney as Handy’s
girlfriend. The result?
I chuckled twice during Welcome to Mooseport. It’s
that funny.
But an able cast is not all the potential that
this film wasted. Are there any comedies other than this one about
politics, that somehow include no political satire whatsoever? The
story may not be very believable, but it was ripe for all sorts of
different comedic opportunities. Instead, President Cole tells his
secretary to take his dog for a pee, Handy gets pushed around by his
girlfriend, and we get a couple of elderly town eccentrics, one who
can’t hear and one (Harve, played by Ed Fielding) who jogs around the
town naked.
In just one example, President Cole strolls up
to Handy’s hardware store to talk to him but is distracted by his pet
Bruce the Moose. He pauses, and we sit there, waiting for the funny
line, waiting for a funny line... and Gene Hackman says, "Shouldn’t it
be in a zoo?" Shouldn’t that line be on the cutting room floor? The
timing was right but someone forgot to add the "funny".
If Mooseport were only funny, I might
have suspended disbelief for some of the ridiculous happenings in the
story. In favor of a few good laughs, why not? But without anything
substantial the plot is as mushy as can be. How President Cole is
supposedly spending millions of dollars on his campaign is
unexplained, but his presidential library is downsized accordingly.
Sally agrees to go on a date with Cole, but
only because she’s mad that Handy hasn’t proposed to her. So she
passive-aggressively tries to hurt this decent, honest guy she
supposedly loves, but she won’t say to him what’s really on her mind,
and I’m supposed to sympathize with this character?
Of course none of that matters because the film
has about as much humor as I do when someone wakes me up at four in
the morning. The film goes to great pains to make sure that nobody is
offended, criticized, or made fun of, and the result is dry and
middling.
Welcome to Mooseport is one of the many
reasons that the year in movies has been off to such a lame start in
2004.
THE VIDEO
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment presents Welcome to
Mooseport in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen. A pan & scan
version is also available if you’re into that sort of thing. The
video was better than average but not great. A little grainy in
places, a little bit of edge enhancement halos here and there. Not
fantastic but not likely to distract attention from the movie
itself.
THE AUDIO
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment presents Welcome to
Mooseport in 5.1 Dolby Surround (English), and 2.1 Dolby
Surround (French and Spanish). Dialog is clear, music is pretty
low-key. This is not the DVD to show off your audio system with,
but it does what it needs to do.
THE EXTRAS
Director Donald Petrie offers an audio
commentary on the film as if you hadn’t wasted enough of
your life watching the movie the first time. He seems pretty
happy with the end result, and some of what I considered the
worst parts he mentions as being “ad-libbed” by the actors, most
notably Ray Romano. The film itself is pretty dull, so there
isn’t much interesting commentary from Petrie unless you want to
know where certain lines came from. Petrie also says that wanted
to make sure that they never indicated whether President Cole
was a Republican or Democrat. To that I can only say “Gotcha!”
in the screenshot below!
Deleted Scenes
are also available with or without the director’s commentary. It’s too
bad the scene at the polling booths was taken out, as Harve emerges to
greet Handy and Cole wearing nothing but a political advertisement.
According to Petrie, this was cut because old women in the test
audience didn’t like it. Fred Savage’s improvised self-deprecation as
Cole’s mousy public relations man might have been a slightly better
theme for Mooseport, but obviously that was cut too.
The Outtakes Reel (2:18) is mercifully short, and the proposed car commercial
(1:17) that President Cole was to appear in
is included in both English and Norwegian.
And now something on the DVDs easter eggs.
From the Special Features -> Deleted Scenes
menu, position the cursor on “Play All.” Then press Left. This will
give you access to "Naked" Harve On the Town (0:23), which is
just a short few sequences of Mooseport’s naked jogger Harve running
around with no clothes on.
From the Special Features Menu, position the
cursor on "Outtake Reel." Then press Left. This will give you access
to Monroe Cole’s Whimsical Weapons (0:31), a series of
alternative shots of Monroe Cole fantasizing about what means with
which to do in his evil ex-wife (Christine
Baranski). Director Donald Petrie alludes to this easter egg in his
commentary.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I can’t even recommend this to Ray Romano fans. There is just so
little that’s funny, I don’t know if comedies come much more generic
or dulled. It’s not worth the money for a rental, and more
importantly, it’s not worth the time to watch it.
