‘Somewhere’ goes nowhere

In theaters Friday: Horrible Bosses, Project Nim [limited], Zookeeper

New on DVD/Blu-ray: 13 Assassins, Hobo with a Shotgun, Of Gods and Men

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this movie; In my estimation, I’ve already spent more than enough. This is simply a warning to faithful readers of The Movie Filter. The best warnings tend to be short and to the point. Stop Ahead, Deer Crossing, Falling Rocks—pretty simple, right? How about a new one: Bad Movie. Maybe we should paste them outside of theaters to redirect unsuspecting viewers lured by a spritzy trailer and a hip soundtrack. Consider this your warning. Somewhere is not worth your time. I wanted to like it. I tried, and I failed.

Somewhere deep within Somewhere there is a nice, succinct short story about an estranged actor father and his precocious daughter. Unfortunately, Coppola didn’t write that short story, she made this movie.

I mean, I’m not trying to be pejorative—well, maybe a little bit—but Sofia Coppola has got to get it together, find a story worth telling and tell it well. I want her to succeed, because she has a great eye, but these nothing-much-happens-just-wallow-in-pretty-pictures films of hers are not cutting it anymore, certainly not with Stephen Dorff in the lead. If you thought Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg was callously pointless and meandering, it is nothing compared to the vapidity of Somewhere.

I get what she’s trying to do here. It’s the same thing she tried to do with Lost in Translation—a film I actually enjoy—but that script was so scant and poor that Bill Murray rewrote every one of his lines and scenes to craft the movie into something watchable. Winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Murray’s re-write seems to have been the worst thing that could have happened to Coppola’s movies, if not her career. Now she thinks she is a writer.

And when someone who can’t write gets hold of a few star actors and glamorous Hollywood locales, Somewhere is the unfortunate result. Poor Elle Fanning. The Super 8 star is the one bright spot in this mess. She could be the Meryl Streep of her young generation, but she is trapped in this shallow pool of cinematic tripe. She’ll be fine, eventually. Coppola, I’m not so sure.