Cole Play

I recently watched De-Lovely, the biography movie on the life of Cole Porter. As you would expect of a story about the gifted songwriter, the movie is actually a musical compromised of many of his most famous tunes.

As seems to be the trend in movie musicals of recent years, the film is packaged in a way that acknowledges the artificiality of bursting into song, by having the whole film framed with the device of seeing most of the numbers presented on a stage in a theater. Where it diverges from this convention is why we're in that theater. The movie is set at the moment of Cole Porter's death, as some usher to the afterlife (played by Jonathan Pryce) comes to present on the stage to Porter the highlights of his life.

Kevin Kline stars as Cole Porter, and I'd be hard-pressed to think of a man better for the job. He's a great actor who handles the material with skill. He performs the songs perfectly, striking a great balance between singing the songs well for the sake of the movie, but not too well, because Porter himself was known to be a rather bad singer.

Ashley Judd plays the woman who marries Porter, fully aware that he isn't straight and doesn't love her in the conventional way of husband and wife. She and Kline have an excellent rapport on screen, and really make you believe in a good marriage built on mutual advantage and respect.

But while their acting is quite good, the script itself is rather lacking. As with so many biopics, that movie doesn't really seem to have a point of view, or a particular message in what it's showing you. It's just a general "hey, look at this man's life." I understand that's the "biography" part of the movie, but I feel this approach neglects the movie part of a movie -- telling a dramatic story with a good arc and a satisfying resolution.

There are also some very odd choices in the supporting cast. Several of the songs are performed by musicians that come in for one number. Elvis Costello does a song, then Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette show up as well. And it's not that any of them gives a bad rendition of their respective songs, it's just that the movie seems to be trying too hard to make Porter seem "current" by having current musicians perform it.

And the bottom line is, the movie takes a rather long time to get where it's going. Overall, I'd rate it a C-. Good for the main actors, but really not good enough to recommend.