I saw this movie for the first time in August, 2006. I recalled reading about it in a Winter Movie Preview in Entertainment Weekly in the summer of 2001, and at the time it was getting good buzz. It was Warner Brothers' big release for the upcoming Christmas season.
I have no strong feeling toward Jim Carrey one way or another, but I do like Frank Capra movies and most movies set in earlier time periods. This one had a good cast, and I love old movie theaters. I knew that restoring one, The Majestic, was the centerpiece of the movie.
What really angered me about this movie is that it steals relentlessly from other movies and other sources and relies on the audience's ignorance to get its points across. There is not a single legitimate, sincere emotion in the entire film. It's completely disengenuous. This is an insult to the audience. Please, please don't tell me "it's only a movie," or "it's a feel-good movie." All filmmakers, including those with the clout of Frank Darabont, should have more respect for their audience. Even a "feel-good" movie needs to play fair.
We weren't all born yesterday. Many people in the audience would surely have known as I did that the letter from Luke, read by Matt Damon in voiceover, is almost a word-for-word steal from a very real and very famous letter written by a Union soldier in the Civil War. (That is noted on the trivia page for The Majestic.)
Yes, The Majestic is beautiful to look at. Some fine actors (Martin Landau, Jeffrey DeMunn, etc.) are given very little to do with their talent. Carrey is fine, but could have been even better had his role(s) not been so underwritten. This could have been a classic if it had decided what it wanted to be -- winsome romantic fantasy or political drama. Frank Capra could often combine the two, and like his best films, this one tries to do both. Sadly, it succeeds at neither.
Ultimately, I think the fact that the movie was released three months after 9/11 hurt it rather than helped it. People had seen enough real heroes to be impressed by a fictional one, even if he was echoing popular sentiments about the meaning of patriotism and what it means to be an American.
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