Review of Winter's Tale (2014) by Adrian Z — 18 Jul 2014

Akiva Goldsman's debut as a film director after many years of writing for projects of varying quality, is an utter disaster. It's not that the production values are bad - they are solid enough.

Casting is also attarctive by any Hollywood standards, but none of the actors are found giving their best - however, that would not be a deal breaker. It's Goldman's script which ruins the film, an adaptation of a fantasy book that probably had deeper themes than what ends up on the film.

Goldsman inundates the story with shallow New Age cliches and cheap symbolism so it grates from the outset, but worst of all, most of the film's crises are resolved via magical cop outs. Farrell plays a thief in 1815 New York who falls for terminally ill red head (Brown-Findlay) with the understanding that somehow his love will miraculously save her life.

Meanwhile, a gangster cum demon (Crowe, in an ineffective performance) who answers to Lucifer himself (Will Smith, speechless) chases after Farrell because, well, miracles are bad for the universe... or something like that.

The story magically stretches out to 2014, but when the novel was set in 1985, the update quietly renders one of the key characters a 108-year old newspaper editor, which even by fairy tale standards is just careless (fear not, it's not Farrell, he's magically ageless).

Did Goldmsan have so much faith in movie magic, no one would notice?