Outside Providence
Given the Farrelly Brothers' unexpected success with There's Something About Mary, they were apparently given carte blanche to make whatever film they wanted for their next project. Aren't we surprised to find that what they really wanted was to make a heartwarming coming of age story about a kid from the wrong side of the tracks?
Notice I said "wanted to make". It's obvious that Outside Providence is supposed to be a Good Will Hunting blue-collar fish-out-of-water (pardon the bizarre image) story, but the film the Farrelly Brothers actually made is a bland, predictable farce plagued by a rote script and amateur direction. For example: when Dildo (yes, that's our protagonist's name, improbably called so even by his father) is busted for possession and sent to an elite private school as punishment, he sees a lovely Uptown Girl ("I bet she never had a back street guy/I bet her mama never told her why") and falls in love immediately through the magic of slow motion cinematography. We all know love at first sight happens at 48 frames per second, it's in the Filmmakers Handbook under Shortcuts to Thinking, Chapter 2 Sec. 7, just after Swelling String Sections For Emotional Punch.
The following chapter of course details the further steps for cinematic falling in love, the chief means being the Montage. There's no need to demonstrate a couple's growing affection with Actual Dialogue or messy Acting when you can cut to the chase with brief clips of the doting duo frolicking in the park, sharing an intimate meal, sitting on the beach, etc. That the film resorts to this creaky cliche without a trace of irony had me groaning in my seat. That it did so at least two more times (the kid gives-up-dope-and-learns-the-pleasure-of-studying, the lovers-weekend-getaway) was so expected I was shocked when it actually happened.
And let's not forget the Voiceover Narration, highlighting, underlining and italicizing our hero's emotional state, again without the bother of actually showing us how he feels. All these lame tricks are presented as if no one had ever thought of them before, making Outside Providence nearly free of original thought. There are flashes of heart - the filmmakers obviously grew up with people like this and at times their affection for the characters comes through, shuddering to life when Alec Baldwin riffs on the Gruff Working-Class Dad for a slumming chuckle or two, and the loyal, low-key Dildo starts to grow on you (again, sorry about the image). Such flashes make the film bearable, but are immediately chopped off at the knees when bits of Farrelly gross-out humor (a crippled kid smacks into a car, a stoner pukes on his friend) are used, incongruous and tame compared to There's Something About Mary's over-the-top dumbfest and therefore much less effective.
While there is a germ of an idea (and I say germ in the physical, 3 microns-wide sense) here in that few films bother to take note of genuine class differences in America, the idea is glossed over by cheap bonding techniques. I'm rich and privileged and educated; you're poor and ignorant; but we both smoke pot, so it's all good, brother. In the hallowed halls of academia, rich stoners are just as elitist as their straight brethren. And besides, rich kids do coke. Wish I'd had some myself, it might have made this one go by faster.
- Jared O'Connor
MOVIES
All Content © 1997, 1998, 1999 Jared O'Connor and Michael Baker