Even if you really love J.D. Salinger.
When you promote a movie like Salinger has been promoted, it really needs to deliver.
If you had gotten excited about Shane Salerno's Salinger, do lower your expectations as far as they can go if you're still going to see it despite the negative reviews. OK, lemme see those expectations. No, no — lower! Billed as a literary mystery delving into J.D. Salinger's life with a secret as twisty as The Crying Game, this hyped documentary, which did not screen for critics and has a book to accompany it, should be an unqualified impressive achievement. Instead, it cannot get out of its own way. Stitching together the story of Salinger's life, work, and reclusion could be enough for a great documentary story; uncovering that he has five new works set to be released beginning in 2015 (assuming this discovery is true) is the revelation of a reporter's lifetime. But this mannered, repetitive, over-the-top film cannot let these things be. This photograph above, for instance? It's of Salinger working on The Catcher in the Rye during World War II, and was taken by his friend. It's incredibly moving, the idea of him grabbing time to write during the most brutal days of World War II, which would — the movie argues convincingly — damage him for the rest of his life. Instead, as with all photographs in this movie, when you see it once, you see it 15 more times.
The Story Factory, Paul Fitzgerald / AP
It doesn't help that the movie's "secret" has now been revealed everywhere.
The fact that the five new books exist and we will get to read them soon (again, if it's true!) was meant to be a shock. Last month, at a press conference for the PBS series American Masters, Susan Lacy, the series' creator and executive producer, told journalists that Salinger, which will air in 2014 as the 200th American Masters, was a "closely-guarded film." She continued: "The Weinstein Company is, in fact, promoting this, sort of like they did The Crying Game. You kind of can’t know the ending." Well. The Crying Game came out in 1992; 21 years later, there's no such thing as a well-kept secret. We'll never know, though, whether audiences would have kept silent, because on Aug. 25, The New York Times published a story by Michael Cieply and Julie Bosman with the headline "Film on Salinger Claims More Books Are Coming." With all the details of what the movie reveals. Oh well, right? That the spoilage occurred is actually even more frustrating after you see the movie knowing that you will learn this only at the film's end, with no details about how Salerno and his team discovered this genuinely huge information.
The Weinstein Company
Salinger relies heavily on reenactments —
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— and they are terrible.
This choice of Salerno's is by far his worst. We see an actor playing Salinger, usually on a stage in front of a screen, typing furiously, smoking, looking frustrated. Was he worried that he didn't have enough material? Salinger runs longer than two hours, and of the criticisms I have, it being boring is not one. So why use this bizarre, embarrassing device? A thousand yikes.
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