: Finding Forrester
I really wanted to like this movie about a brilliant 16-year-old writer growing up in the Bronx who finds out the strange old man watching him is really the eccentric and elusive writer William Forrester who wrote one Pulitzer-winning novel and disappeared from public view. The film had some good stuff, but was far too long and slow. I didn’t understand the basketball stuff: the director assumed I’d understand the game, but I couldn’t even tell which team was which. (I am the opposite of a basketball fan. I don’t even consider basketball a sport: it’s just a semi-athletic endeavor for tall people.) I didn’t understand the significance of things like the silly game-winning free throw at the end of the film — it just felt contrived to me. Perhaps I was missing something, or perhaps it really was dumb. I don’t know. I did like some of the writing-related material, but even there the film was on the weak side, not really explaining anything, not going into much depth. Basically the film tries to keep Sean Connery’s character (Forrester) mysterious and assumes that mystery equals profundity, but instead we get trite platitudes and boredom. Not a great film. Interesting, but could have been much, much better. I think I was more disappointed by the film’s waste of potential than disappointed by anything in the movie itself; on it’s own the film isn’t bad, but it saddens me to think how good it could have been.
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