Easily the least engaging film we’ve seen so far, Richard Linklater’s “Me and Orson Welles,” wasn’t terrible — it was mostly unremarkable.
About a young aspiring actor (a surprisingly decent Zac Efron) who randomly lands a theater gig of “Julius Caesar,” with pre-movie fame but still renowned Orson Welles. We wonder what compels a filmmaker to tell a story like this.
Not because it’s bad, but the story — set in the mid-’30s, must have felt like a nice period-piece change of pace. The script is rather clever at times but if you’re going to spend two years or so of your life on a film you want probably want to tackle something that really means something.
This is ‘Orson Welles’ main problem. It is relatively to moderately humorous, it’s well acted (Christian Mackay nails Welles deep booming intonation) and it can be charming (mostly due to Claire Danes), but is overall lifeless and lacks soul (we should note that Ben Chaplin is pretty solid too). It’s ultimately, largely innocuous, which makes it also rather forgettable.
Assisting in the stiffness is the sets. If you’re going to shoot a film about 1930s New York, you probably don’t want to shoot it on a clean studio lot that one can spot a mile away and the green screen to capture the Manhattan skyline doesn’t help either.
The actor who plays Joe Cotton (James Tupper, previously seen as the romantic lead in Anne Heche’s TV show Men In Trees) is rather good, and the subtle nods to the “Third Man” and “Touch of Evil,” are fun, but this pic is another film in the mostly unsatisfying recent past of Linklater’s work. He’s a solid director, but we don’t think we’ve deeply cared for one of his films in a long time — perhaps “The School of Rock,” which was cute and winning.
“Me And Orson Welles,” is fine one supposes, but not necessarily worth writing home about. [C+]
It sounds like you probably fell asleep during the screening and missed what the film is all about. What is it about? Confused here.
It’s about a hapless kid that gets the dream of a lifetime to work with Orson Welles on his stage adaptation of “Caesar.” That’s it. There’s nothing deeper to it. One could guess it’s about failure or the chance of the universe, or fate, but that’s asking far too much from this film. It’s about a scrape with fame, nothing more, nothing less.
School of Rock is “cute and winning”: Do I detect someone damning a film with faint praise?