The Prince of Tides

I feel like I've been pretty sympathetic in my reviewing so far. The only real review of a movie that I hated was Cabin Fever. So it's my time to take out my cinematic dagger and thrust it through the cold heart of Barbra Streisand's The Prince of Tides. Streisand's well-proportioned disaster is one of those well-meaning Lifetime movies that the Academy takes pity on. It features big stars, gets an actress-turned-director to film the thing, it's based on a celebrated novel. Well, none of these credentials actually go into making a halfway decent film. The Prince of Tides is so thoroughly derivative and uninteresting it made me want to cry. Yeah.
The film begins with some oh-so-pleasant-no-wait-BORING shots of South Carolina. It was all orange skies, pristine lakes, tall grass. Nothing you couldn't find in your typical 99 cent calender from Walgreens. Already I was worried. Our protagonist is Tom (Nick Nolte), an unemployed football coach who is sent to New York to help his twin sister's psychiatrist after his sister attempts suicide. There's this whole complicated past, that Tom will only begrudgingly elude to at first. Tom is short with psychiatrist Susan Lowenstein (Streisand) at first. She's inquisitive, he's defensive. However, Susan demands that the sessions are necessary in order to help Tom's sister, Savannah, to get better. As you might have guessed, these sessions really become Tom's personal therapy sessions more so than an attempt to help Savannah.
There's a twist here I bet you weren't expecting: Tom and Susan fall in love. What's the problem? He's married. What's the set up? His wife (Blythe Danner) is dissatisfied and having an affair with a man that wants to marry her. What's Susan's problem? She's married. What's the set up? Her husband is a royal jerk. Bingo! Now these two can fall in love without feeling too much regret! God, what a wonderful set-up! If only it hadn't been used in countless other films.
There's also this terrifically wonderful sub-plot about Lowenstein's son, Bernard (Jason Gould), an indifferent and bitterly caustic young man that Tom comes around to teaching football to. It wasn't enough to have Tom and Susan emotionally pecking at one another, now we have to watch Nolte pep-talk an unhappy teen into being a winner? What did we do to deserve this?!!!
The sessions are of little interest, proving to be like poorly written episodes of In Treatment. There's talk of an abusive step-father and other traumas that will not be discussed here to preserve certain, big game changing moments. The memories are stinging, their treatment in the film lacks bite.
Nolte does accomplished work with a character that never felt fully developed. Yeah, we understand he uses sarcasm to hide his pain. He's suppressed. He's angry. He's also strangely proto-typical and difficult to connect to. Nolte's self-aware rants concerning his unwillingness to discuss his emotions feel painfully awkward because he never feels quite real. His break down scene is efficient yet my heart didn't reach out to this man. But it desperately, desperately should have. Streisand delivers what may be the most cliched representation of a psychiatrist I've ever seen. I kept expecting her to lie Nolte out on a couch and nod her head approvingly. As her performance stands, she lacks subtlety or even just some plain insipid enjoyment. She's not even fun to watch while being a misinterpretation, she's just there. Standing there, sitting there. Speaking there. Her anger at Tom for his unwillingness to express himself is just plain annoying. Her presence at a party feels out of place, her attraction to Tom seems misguided, the idea that she has a son feels oddly unrealistic. The scene in which Susan and Tom (SPOILERS!) embrace for the last time didn't make me feel anything at all. Streisand didn't bring any new emotions to this interaction, settling for pure, uncontroversial ones. She's sad, she's strong, she hurts. I barf.
Perhaps the two best performances are courtesy of George Carlin, Savannah's flamboyant neighbor, and Blythe Danner, as Tom's wife. Danner finds a wealth of pain and heartbreak and yet joy in opportunities that will ultimately set her free as Sallie. Her conversation with Nolte over the phone is as close to emotional weight as the film gets. Carlin just has fun with the role, as that gay New Yorker neighbor we all know. Carlin isn't, say, nuanced, but at least he infuses the film with some good energy. Jeroen Krabbe as Lowenstein's pompous husband is suitably unlikable but there is no development of character. He merely serves the purpose of being hated by the audience. But maybe it isn't the acting, maybe it's the fault of the...
SCRIPT!!!! That terrible, terrible script. The film is almost literally broken up into segments. "First we have the conflict between Susan and Tom, then their period where he opens up, then we need the part where he divulges TERRIBLE PAST, then Susan and Tom go onto their love montage. That's good, right?" The film is so thoroughly predictable in its treatment of the story and it's supposed emotions it puts say, The Notebook to shame. Much of this, I guess, can be blamed on the book on which this movie is based, but Becky Johnston and Pat Conroy (the author, yes, so I can't imagine the book being much better) as screenwriters fail to transition the book to the screen successfully. The script is one of those faithful adaptations that does nothing interesting or imaginative with the source material. The dialogue is choppy, the characterization stilted, and the story arch contrived.
Streisand is perhaps a more competent director than actress in this film, but alas, her direction isn't even very inspired. She thinks if she puts together a sappy, typical romance movie, no one will notice because audiences have been eating those up for years. We did notice. We want our money back.
Worst of all, The Prince of Tides isn't even any fun. I could choose to not mind a mediocre film if the film was at least self-aware of its mediocrity. Terms of Endearment, anyone? But The Prince of Tides seems unwilling to admit that it's anything less than pure cinematic gold. Funny, it seemed like bronze to me.