ViewGuide

Created Sep 28, 2008 06:11PM PST • Edited Jun 15, 2022 12:41AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   OK 2.5

   Perfect music, emotionally loaded material and an attractive production can’t rescue this manipulative 9/11 movie’s cliche characters. Like outcasts from writer-director Mike Binder’s Mind of a Married Man show and an Adam Sandler arrested-development movie, they never go beyond their essential immaturity, even in the face of culture-altering pathos.

   The movie does generate initial goodwill by tackling the personal aftermath of 9/11, though it soon squanders it, as I explain in Film.

   While I didn’t expect greatness, Reign Over Me disappoints me all the more because Reign O’er Me remains one of the touchstone songs in my personal playlist. Like the white guys in this movie, my young life – if not changed – was certainly given voice by Quadrophenia, as I explain in Music.

   Thus, while the movie remains notable for Mike Binder and Adam Sandler’s semi-successful attempt to play real grown-ups and for tackling 9/11 PTSD, it remains far from the great 9/11 movie yet to be made.

4. Acting

   Good 3.0

   Adam Sandler channels his inner-child yet again, this time layered with the trappings of serious acting. For instance, he’s mastered the art of crying on command, the brutally essential skill of real movie stars.

   Unfortunately, we never get past the fact that it’s the SandMan playing his stock man-child character. After experiencing the ultimate midlife crisis, he responds by staying out all night, playing drums in a metal band, and cruising endlessly through a cool NYC. In short, not much of a stretch for this maestro of immaturity.

   Don Cheadle, always smooth, delivers a competent but aloof performance in the Mind of the Married Man role. Jada Pinkett Smith perks up the screen every time she appears as his wife.

   Saffron Burrows also livens up the proceedings as an amorous patient, while Liv Tyler deadens them as an unconvincing therapist. Why is Tyler in so many movies and Burrows in so few?

5. Male Stars OK 2.5

6. Female Stars Good 3.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    OK 2.5

    Slow to get going, the movie picks up a sweet rocking tempo when Don Cheadle hops aboard Adam Sandler’s moto-board, the two buddies cruising off through rain slicked Manhattan streets to the Pretenders Stop Your Sobbing. The winning tone set by this perfect movie moment soon gets dashed when the next bit of exposition about Sandler’s family vaguely refers to them as having died in “a” plane crash.

    The movie already informed us that they died aboard one of the 9/11 jets, making the later obfuscation both confusing and dispiriting. Indeed, from this point on it becomes clear that Reign Over Me intends to treat Sandler’s misfortune as the result of a freak occurrence – other than for a few sketchy references – and not as the collateral damage of a monumental act of terrorism. The movie feels cowardly and phony as a result.

11. Direction Barely OK 2.0

12. Play Bad 1.0

13. Music Perfect 5.0

    Reign Over Me pays homage to The School of Rock syllabus, w/ songs from the Who, Springsteen, and the Pretenders all getting significant air time.

    The title song is heard twice, first the Who’s original version from Quadrophenia, then Pearl Jam’s version over the closing credits.

    That a guy who came of age in the 70s or 80s would seek solace from Love Reign O’er Me makes perfect sense to this old Who Head. My buddies and I spent endless hours listening to and debating the relative merits of Quadrophenia, with Love Reign O’er Me often declared the greatest song on what is arguably the greatest album ever.

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.7

    Much ado about potential sex and violence, the former blessedly more prominent than the latter. Saffron Burrows, she of the movie star name, cheekbones and curlicue pout, plays an orally obsessed divorcee, the kind who comes on to ordinary dentists – in the movies.

17. Sex Titillating 1.7

18. Violence Gentle 1.4

19. Rudeness Salty 1.9

21. Reality

    Glib 1.2

    Binder’s movie could have achieved greatness if he’d had the courage to not turn away from the terroristic reality of 9/11. Instead, the definitive 9/11 movie is yet to be made.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.6

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0