By
Ian Caruth
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Golf not quite as boring on film as TV
Robert Redford's new film, "The Legend of Bagger Vance," which posits the game of golf as a metaphor for life, is itself much like a round of golf - beautiful, overly long and utterly meaningless.
That it is somehow partially redeemed is a miracle of cinematography and charisma - the former attributable to Michael Ballhaus and the latter mostly to Will Smith, who despite his staggering hubris (Willenium as an album title?) and laughable rap career, is just so damn lovable that he can make almost any movie at least watchable.
Matt Damon stars as Rannulph Junuh, a comically named Southerner (as if there is any other kind), smooth lover-man and all-around swell guy who happens to be a preternaturally talented golfer. Before shipping off for World War I, Junuh is an amateur golfer poised on the cusp of a pro career, and the pride of his hometown of Savannah, Ga.
Junuh is also tacitly engaged in a sort of who-can-be-more-beautiful contest with his sweetheart Adele Invergordon, played by aesthetics-enhancer Charlize Theron. Unfortunately, both his relationship and his career are put on hold by the insistent beckoning of Uncle Sam, who needs warm bodies to shoot bad guys in Europe.
While serving in the war, Junuh sees his entire squadron killed in a forest, has a flashback to "Saving Private Ryan," realizes he is in the wrong movie and, horrified, returns to the United States. Junuh is so shaken by the chronological gaffe that he spends the next 12 years in hiding, exchanging his two past loves, Adele and golf, for two much slinkier new mistresses - bitterness and alcohol.
In 1931, after being nearly wiped out by the Great Depression, Adele asks the alcoholic, reclusive, yet strangely still physically fit Junuh one last favor - to play in an exhibition match with Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen, two of the greatest golfers of all time, for the princely sum of $10,000. The publicity will revitalize Adele's inherited white elephant golf course, and the competition might even reawaken Junuh's long-dormant zest for life.
In the throes of a personal depression triggered by the thought that he has "lost his authentic swing," whatever that means, Junuh meets shadowy caddy Bagger Vance (Smith), a mysterious spiritual guide given to spouting homespun wisdom about golf and life. With Bagger's help, Junuh attempts to become the man and competitor he once was, and win lots of money too.
Even with such an amazingly hokey plot, "Bagger Vance" makes for a wholly tolerable viewing experience. The actors are all reasonably capable, and the script mixes some well-timed humor in with its elevated platitudes about life and swinging.
However, it is also a deeply flawed movie. Racial issues are completely ignored - inconceivable for the Depression-era South, especially concerning an uppity black itinerant who tells a white man what to do. The script's treatment of Vance is particularly insulting - the character fits so many base, latently racist stereotypes, Bagger Vance may as well have been played by Ted Danson in blackface.
Gaping plot holes loom, interesting characters are introduced and then ignored and Junuh and Adele's love story seems like a hasty afterthought. With so many things wrong, it may seem impossible to believe that "Bagger Vance" is anything but a waste of time and money.
But, at heart, this pretty, feel-good movie is just barely adequate as filmmaking, and is a reasonable divertissement - as long as one doesn't think too hard about it.
