"Despite great acting, Evelyn
is emotionally flat"
As a
movie, Evelyn
is an
underachiever. I have trouble coming up with other ways to
describe it. It is a movie that, were it not for the big stars,
would have gone straight to video or to the Lifetime channel. I
was moved it, but not to a great length. Evelyn was also
likable, but not lovable. Perhaps the pitfall of this film is
the lack of emotional connection to the characters, or it could
be the been there, done that feeling provoked by a story
that seems just a little too familiar.
Desmond
Doyle’s (Pierce Brosnan, also producer) wife runs out on him and
their three children, including Evelyn (Sophie Vavasseur). The
children are taken away and relocated to boarding schools when
it is discovered that Doyle, who is unemployed, is raising the
kids on his own. In order to get his children back, Doyle must
make history by taking on the Irish Supreme Court. To aid him in
his battle, he puts together a ragtag legal team, including Nick
(Aidan Quinn), Michael (Stephen Rea), and Tom Connolly (Alan
Bates). Rounding out the cast is Julianna Margulies as
Bernadette, a bartender with a heart of gold.
Brosnan
has set himself up well for the movie holiday season with a nice
one-two punch of Die Another Day and Evelyn. While
on his promotional tour of talk shows for Die Another Day,
Brosnan managed to speak of Evelyn, sometimes for longer
periods than his new Bond movie. It was obvious in his
interviews that Evelyn is very close to his heart. Pierce
is a great actor who is trying his hardest not to be marked
forever as Bond. Anytime he does an action movie it is
inevitably compared to Bond, so it is with compelling movies
like Evelyn that he must try to break free. In Evelyn,
Pierce proves that he is more than just a man who looks good in
tuxedos and with a smirk on his face.
Evelyn
is an all around well-acted movie. It should be stressed that
its downfalls are not due to the acting, but the fact that it is
too strictly based on a true story, which even though is as good
as it is, but ultimately seems too contrived. Maybe if the
producers had taken some liberties with the story we would have
been given a real reason to care for the characters. As it were,
the outcome of the movie was generally projected throughout,
leaving the viewer with few surprises.
Doyle’s
life is too quickly and easily put back together; after it falls
completely apart he scrapes himself from the bottom of the
barrel without enough trials and tribulations to really make us
pity him. On the same note, the nuns at Evelyn’s school don’t
seem nasty enough when compared to society’s perception of them.
They should be scarier because these were real people, but they
seem tame after the recent real-life sex scandals involving
children in the Catholic Church. The courtroom scenes should
have been more dramatic. Too much time was spent with Evelyn on
the stand being cute, instead of having great dialogue between
these fantastic actors. It was interesting to see the impact
that the new invention, namely the television, had on this case
and the characters. Desmond became instantly famous when he told
his story to the news reporters and was the everyman’s hero as
his plight was broadcast throughout bars in Ireland.
Evelyn
is a heartwarming story, but it’s a feel good movie that doesn’t
have enough teeth or raw emotion to give you goose bumps or
elicit tears from your eyes.
