Review of The Shipping News (2001) by Siân P — 19 Aug 2008

The Shipping News isn't the sort of film I seek out to watch, it just so happened to be on the television one evening so I thought I'd tape it.

Spacey plays a loser whose who winds up meeting Cate Blanchett randomly in the street. Blanchett's character isn't the nicest kind of person to meet, she ends up sleeping with Spacey, they have a kid and she dies horribly in a car crash. Judi Dench turns up and pusuades Spacey and his daughter to return to their family home near the sea. Spacey winds up writing for the local paper and gets it on with Julianne Moore.

There's plenty of other things that happen along the way to Spacey and his family that bring them closer together and help them through the grief and loss of their respective families.

It's all very well acted, as you might expect from a cast such as this, but the whole film was very strange from beginning to end. Spacey plays these downbeat characters very very, his 'Coyle' character was very similar to the person he played in American Beauty.

Judi Dench really didn't have a whole lot to do and just seemed to mope around their weird old house all day. Julianne Moore too seemed wasted in her role as the new love interest of Spacey.

The Shipping News is pretty much unclassifieable, you don't know really where its going and it eventually goes nowehere. Its a plodding mess of a film that really doesn't know what its about - the fact that there was no comic relief either didn't help the film at all.

The Shipping News is best avoided if you can, unless you are huge fans of the actors involved, if not I wouldn't bother.