The Cranky Critic reviews
LAST DANCE
Starring: Sharon Stone and Rob Morrow
Directed by: Bruce Beresford
"Suggested" Ticket Price: $2.75
The buzz was so bad on "Last Dance" that the "Dead Girl Walking" jokes were flying fast and
frenzied. I am pleased to report that Sharon Stone has nothing to be embarrassed about. It wasn't
that awful.
Then again, I suspect that director Bruce Beresford did not intend to make the audience laugh
with his final scene. But they did.
As it is known to happen in Hollywood, sometimes two different creative teams set to work on
exceptionally similar ideas. There were two movies that preceded "Big," all with the same idea
of a grownup and a child swapping bodies. Edward James Olmos made a film called "American
Me," whose basic story was the cornerstone of Taylor Hackford's "Bound By Honor: Blood In,
Blood Out." One film succeeds, the others bomb.
As bothered as I was by "Dead Man Walking," at least in that film something reached out and
started mangling my gut. No such luck with "Last Dance."
You have to connect with the characters on screen, at some level, to make this kind of story
work. In "DMW," whether or not you felt that the nun fell for the con, you cannot deny that there
was a visceral link between the two. You could not overlook the fact that Sean Penn's convict
coming to grips with the severity of his crime, emotionally peeled like a cooked egg. And though
I do not make comparisons to source material, "Last Dance" is not based on "DMW," so bombs
away.....
Stone's character has been on Death Row for 12 years, following a pair of crack induced murders.
Vicious, brutal murders of two teenage lovers. She doesn't even want to fight the sentence
anymore, but state law requires a review by a Clemency Board. Enter Rob Morrow as the new
lawyer on the block. Morrow's brother is the Governor's Chief of Staff, and he pulled strings to
get the kid a break. The kid drives a Porsche. Has a stupid haircut. Wasn't all that upstanding as
a lawyer in the past. And before you know it he develops strong, um, feelings for the convict.
Why does he feel this way? Where do his emotions spring from? Hell if I know. But he fights
like a hellcat, perhaps I should say overemotionalizes (in layman's terms, overacts), to save her
life. The battle continues up to the end of the movie which I won't reveal, just in case you
actually sit through this thing. It's not a hard thing to sit through, it's just not a great way to waste
your time.
I'm not fully sure if the problem is solely a bad performance on Morrow's part, or a valiant effort
to make something of a bad script -- and the script is a bad one. Big death scenes should not
make an audience laugh, but they did. The final scene (which I will not describe) should not
make the audience keel over, but it did.
Across the board, whether from Stone or Morrow or Peter Gallagher (playing Morrow's brother)
the performances were not entrancing. The supporting characters are all stereotypical -- the
southern governor up for reelection; the minority death row inmate convinced that the "white
girl" is going to be the one who gets off; the bureaucrat whose seen these cases come and go,
always the same way.
That would be Randy Quaid, who begins as a stereotype and is the sole member of the cast to
develop into a full bodied character. But it isn't enough, and frankly my dears, I didn't give a
damn. It's not worth very much to watch an accent in search of an emotional cacophony, which
is a simple way to describe Sharon Stone's performance.
Was there potential? Surprise, yes. The trailer contains a line which, having seen the trailer 4
times, ALWAYS made the viewing audience groan. You may see it in the commercial. Stone
angrily yelps, "If ahm gonna die it's gonna be on mah terms." Darn thing is, in context the line
makes perfect sense and is properly delivered. But a good moment isn't good enough.
Watching two characters try to interact when there's no way that they can is an incredibly
difficult thing. It is an incredibly difficult job for actors to pull off; to make the audience care or
be touched. It didn't happen here.
It costs $8.50 to see a first run movie here in New York City. But we ran the pricing question across the
message boards here on eDrive and will settle for an "average," which means I'll keep the alleged ticket price
to Eight Bucks. What would I have paid for "Last Dance?"
$2.75
Not a great idea for a rental, unless you feel like talking back at the screen. Which is what some members of
the audience I sat with started to do. Not many, but enough that I noticed. The average reaction, based on the
folk that I spoke to afterwards was a shrug of the shoulders and a "not much" answer to the question "what did
you think?"
The Cranky Critic (tm) and (c) 1996 Chuck Schwartz. All Rights Reserved.
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