Review of The Gift (2000) by Rosie T — 18 Jul 2010

I am not usually bothered by pornographically rich people playing crude approximations of the Y'all Set, but the strained attempts at down-home earthy pathos and what-all on offer from Messrs. Swank, Blanchett and Reeves in this movie are almost as irksome as movies in which we're asked to identify with ordinary schmucks who do ordinary jobs and somehow live in multi-billion dollar houses in Queen Anne or the Upper East Side. Anywhoo, this is not a movie about the latter, but it is a movie in which several mansion-owners think that wearing schlubby clothes and having bad haircuts gives them an earnest air of hardscrabble blahblahblah, and that is really quite grating.

Aside from that, it is Sam Raimi not doing any jokes, and as such, the picture's tone is something of a mess; most of the best moments come from JK Simmons, who has wandered in from another movie and plays a member of the Y'all Set far less offensively than his earnest cohorts, which is to say he slips a delightfully cartoonish performance as a donut-loving police caricature under the radar.

Finally, there are movies in which Cate Blanchett is amazing and makes me think I am in error in my not loving Cate Blanchett; and then there are movies in which Cate Blanchett plays a flawless Mary Sue of a protagonist, in which there is little about her to be engaged with and your attention starts to wander and you start to say things like "now HANG the fuck on, she's not psychic at ALL, in fact she's the OPPOSITE of psychic; if she has THE GIFT then her GIFT is that in spite of seeing red herrings all over the shop, she is almost as good at noticing very obvious things as anyone would be who was only sometimes asleep while this movie was playing.".

And I don't like those second kind of Cate Blanchett movies.