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Man in the ChairStarring Christopher Plummer, Michael Angaro, M. Emmet Walsh, Robert Wagner Mitch Pileggi and Mimi Kennedy |
IN SHORT: Make no bones about it, Christopher Plummer is terrific. Man in the Chair let's the old lion roar!. [Rated PG-13 for language and thematic elements. 107 minutes]
Cameron Kindcaid (Michael Angarano), car thief and film geek, whose high school film class assignment -- as if the kid has nothing better to do over christmas break -- is to make his own movie. A certain bully-prone moronic member of same class has a daddy in the biz, which means a $20K plus budget, trade paper recognition for his "short film" start up, as well as a pro cast and crew at his beck and call.
Cameron has a dad in the biz, too. He's somewhere in LA, having abandoned the family years before. In his place is step dad Floyd (Mitch Pileggi), whom Cam dislikes. Floyd owns the Beverly Cinema, an oldies "palace" where Cam likes to hang out. There he meets a loudmouthed, retired gaffer named Glenn "Flash" Madden (Christopher Plummer) -- in plain english a "gaffer" is a film set's electrician. "Flash" is the nickname given Glenn by an obscure writer/director -- Orson Welles (Jodi Ashworth) -- during the filming of an equally obscure film titled Citizen Kane. You gotta give this film's creator Michael Schroeder credit for thinking large. Flash isn't afraid to fire both barrels, so to speak, at any moron who talks during a movie screening, which is how he and Cam meet.
The pair sorta kinda strike up an acquaintanceship -- nothing disgusting, so get your mind out of your pants -- and when Cam needs aid with his project, Flash begrudgingly signs on. Actually, no, he doesn't. He gets bribed into the deal with cigars and Wild Turkey, the only indulgences banned by those who run the Hollywood Retirement Home for Aging Screen Folk [GET REAL NAME AND REPLACE]. Flash does introduce Cam to fellow old guy Mickey Hopkins (M Emmet Walsh), a writer on Welles' Kane who hasn't typed word one in years and who is slowly rotting away in a one room studio in a slum of a nursing home. Cam's project gives Mickey a reason to live, but not for a good long time in the course of the film's run. More important, Mickey's situation sparks Cam into gear. Instead of a flashy biker teen fantasy -- the original idea -- he'll do a documentary on the discarding of biz vets as human garbage.
Needing financing, Flash brings Cam up to the Hills of Beverly, where producer Taylor Moss (Robert Wagner) lives. Flash hasn't talked to Moss in 43 years -- something to do with the latter stealing the former's wife -- but the $5 grand needed is a piss in the pool and the three time Oscar winning producer likes Cameron's ambition. Strictly above the belt, folks. So back they go to Mickey's retirement abode where a full generation of film makers are locked away, so to speak, in retirement. Cam's association with Flash gives all of 'em *not* a reason to live but, at least, a job in their old specialties for the ten day shooting cycle.
The real point of this film is that we are all resigned to letting the elderly fall our of our lives, or at least perceptions, like wheat from chaff. It's a solid story kept interesting by a dynamic Plummer who tears up the screen even when the script goes out of kilter and Wagner, who isn't seen often anymore either. Our big gripe with the film comes with Schroeder's insistence, as a director, in filling his film with all sorts of artsy fartsy visual crap shots; the stuff you go to film school to work out of your system. They get in the way of the telling of his story and slam our recommendation down to the rental level.
On average, a first run movie ticket will run you Ten Bucks. Were Cranky able to set his own price to Man in the Chair , he would have paid . . .
$5.00
Those in the biz will catch some good inside stuff but that won't get in the way of a consistent story. Feel free to wait to rent.
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