I acquired a DVD of this movie about two years ago. I am usually not over fond of John Carrey. And I watched 15 minutes of The Majestic and then gave it up in disgust. Fortunately, I did not trash it or give it away.Then it seemed to be just another rather over-sentimental chocolate box design melodrama based on nostalgia for the early 1950s. I myself am quite nostalgic about my own non-American 1950s as a child but I don't generally like the stuff being spooned down my throat (figuratively speaking).
However, yesterday I noticed "The Majestic" in my movie collection and decided to give the film a second chance. Wow! It turns put to be a real gem if you can get past the first ten minutes or so. This time Carrey shows his real talent, instead of the mindless jinks he gets up to in most of the other movies I've watched him in. He is assisted by a superb supporting cast of whom only one or two are well–known outside of TV series.
Let me say initially what I still do not like about the movie. First, it need not have been so long. This was mostly as a result of too many pregnant pauses and over-stretched intimate scenes between the hero, the heroine and the old man who imagines that he is the hero's father. Second the near fatal flaw which has prevented the film achieving full marks of excellence is the awful soggy background musical sound track. It reminded me too much of that in the 1960s Peyton Place TV series. Indeed, it has overtone of a soap opera (which The Majestic is definitively not). The music track was as irritating intrusion and as awful as the canned audience laughter in an otherwise good TV sit-com. Nothing else was bad, in fact all other aspects of the movie were outstanding.
The plot partly revolves around a dilapidated and unused cine theatre in a small town on the Californian coast. It calls to mind works such as the Ealing Studios 1957 comedy "The Smallest Show on Earth" where a young couple inherit and try to revive a decrepit old theatre and Italy's 1988 "Cinema Paradiso". Also the film's small town setting calls to mind Frank Capra's 1946 "It's a Wonderful Life". But the actual plots are entirely different. The Majestic is shot in Southern California in warm evocative colours and each frame looks like a Norman Rockwell magazine cover. In contrast to the background music track the borrowed music used (for e.g. a jive dance scene) is contemporary and pleasing.
The plot involves a young script-writer producer - Peter Appleton (John Carrey)- who learns he is to be summoned to appear before the notorious Un-American Affairs Committee. Many folk in Hollywood were obliged to do so during the McCarthy "witch hunt" period where every other intellectual was regarded as a clandestine, unpatriotic, communist spy. Peter's studio bosses decide they have to can his latest work-in-progress and let him go until the matter is resolved (to get off the hook he may have to sign a statement that he renounces his alleged membership in the Communist Party and finger a list of other Hollywood personalities whom he has never met).
To drown his sorrows he and his stuffed monkey mascot have one too many drinks in the Bongo Congo bar. He then decides to take a spin along the coast road in his convertible Mercedes. But in an effort to avoid a possum on a narrow one lane wooden bridge he, monkey mascot and car end up in swift flowing river. Pushed by the current Peter bangs his head on a stone pier of the bridge and is stunned . The next morning he is discovered on an ocean side sandy beach cast up by the tide. The old man who finds him as he regains consciousness then brings him into the small town nearby for breakfast in a diner and for some medical attention to his head wound. Now this is not the first movie I've seen where somebody loses their memory nor where they are the victims (or beneficiaries) of a mistaken identity.
Will leave it at that, Peter is mistaken for a young town denizen, Luke Trimble. A GI who has been missing in action during the recent World War II, and is presumed dead since his body was never found. Luke even has a tomb in the town's memorial graveyard. Peter is incredibly like the missing Luke and is "re-discovered" by Luke's old father, who is the owner of a disused cine theatre,The Majestic, and is fully convinced that Peter is his son.
This situation is fertile with the many predictable and quite a few unpredictable outcomes which are the stuff of good melodramas. The movie's makers have fully and successfully developed such opportunities. Over nearly three hours they have neatly handled and resolved the plot and its sub-plots in a manner which would make Shakespeare himself proud of them–but for the two flaws I have already mentioned.
The film was produced by Castle Rock , which has also made a number of Stephen King based-movies including "The Shawshrank Redemption" and "The Green Mile". So it is not surprising that at least two of the main actors have appeared in other Castle Rock movies. Altogether The Majestic is a highly entertaining melodrama for a wet week end or for an evening when the fare on regular TV sucks.
However, yesterday I noticed "The Majestic" in my movie collection and decided to give the film a second chance. Wow! It turns put to be a real gem if you can get past the first ten minutes or so. This time Carrey shows his real talent, instead of the mindless jinks he gets up to in most of the other movies I've watched him in. He is assisted by a superb supporting cast of whom only one or two are well–known outside of TV series.
Let me say initially what I still do not like about the movie. First, it need not have been so long. This was mostly as a result of too many pregnant pauses and over-stretched intimate scenes between the hero, the heroine and the old man who imagines that he is the hero's father. Second the near fatal flaw which has prevented the film achieving full marks of excellence is the awful soggy background musical sound track. It reminded me too much of that in the 1960s Peyton Place TV series. Indeed, it has overtone of a soap opera (which The Majestic is definitively not). The music track was as irritating intrusion and as awful as the canned audience laughter in an otherwise good TV sit-com. Nothing else was bad, in fact all other aspects of the movie were outstanding.
The plot partly revolves around a dilapidated and unused cine theatre in a small town on the Californian coast. It calls to mind works such as the Ealing Studios 1957 comedy "The Smallest Show on Earth" where a young couple inherit and try to revive a decrepit old theatre and Italy's 1988 "Cinema Paradiso". Also the film's small town setting calls to mind Frank Capra's 1946 "It's a Wonderful Life". But the actual plots are entirely different. The Majestic is shot in Southern California in warm evocative colours and each frame looks like a Norman Rockwell magazine cover. In contrast to the background music track the borrowed music used (for e.g. a jive dance scene) is contemporary and pleasing.
The plot involves a young script-writer producer - Peter Appleton (John Carrey)- who learns he is to be summoned to appear before the notorious Un-American Affairs Committee. Many folk in Hollywood were obliged to do so during the McCarthy "witch hunt" period where every other intellectual was regarded as a clandestine, unpatriotic, communist spy. Peter's studio bosses decide they have to can his latest work-in-progress and let him go until the matter is resolved (to get off the hook he may have to sign a statement that he renounces his alleged membership in the Communist Party and finger a list of other Hollywood personalities whom he has never met).
To drown his sorrows he and his stuffed monkey mascot have one too many drinks in the Bongo Congo bar. He then decides to take a spin along the coast road in his convertible Mercedes. But in an effort to avoid a possum on a narrow one lane wooden bridge he, monkey mascot and car end up in swift flowing river. Pushed by the current Peter bangs his head on a stone pier of the bridge and is stunned . The next morning he is discovered on an ocean side sandy beach cast up by the tide. The old man who finds him as he regains consciousness then brings him into the small town nearby for breakfast in a diner and for some medical attention to his head wound. Now this is not the first movie I've seen where somebody loses their memory nor where they are the victims (or beneficiaries) of a mistaken identity.
Will leave it at that, Peter is mistaken for a young town denizen, Luke Trimble. A GI who has been missing in action during the recent World War II, and is presumed dead since his body was never found. Luke even has a tomb in the town's memorial graveyard. Peter is incredibly like the missing Luke and is "re-discovered" by Luke's old father, who is the owner of a disused cine theatre,The Majestic, and is fully convinced that Peter is his son.
This situation is fertile with the many predictable and quite a few unpredictable outcomes which are the stuff of good melodramas. The movie's makers have fully and successfully developed such opportunities. Over nearly three hours they have neatly handled and resolved the plot and its sub-plots in a manner which would make Shakespeare himself proud of them–but for the two flaws I have already mentioned.
The film was produced by Castle Rock , which has also made a number of Stephen King based-movies including "The Shawshrank Redemption" and "The Green Mile". So it is not surprising that at least two of the main actors have appeared in other Castle Rock movies. Altogether The Majestic is a highly entertaining melodrama for a wet week end or for an evening when the fare on regular TV sucks.