J. Edgar

It takes a lot to make the often stuffy, rigid, cookie-cutter subgenre of biopic movies produce something memorable and great and wonderful, but it doesn't take much to churn out another dud. All you need is a chaotically messy script, some good actors pretending to be bad actors, and enough hilariously awkward latex to render the entire moving picture, well, immovable. Such is the case with the disastrously dull J. Edgar, which boasts a veteran director (Clint Eastwood), an Oscar-winning screenwriter (Dustin Lance Black), and a massively talented star (Leonardo DiCaprio). Sounds like a recipe for success! Apparently not at all, to the point that perhaps these human ingredients were replaced by their pod people doppelgangers. Despite all of the talent in front of and behind the camera, J. Edgar is nothing more than a longwinded joke masquerading as a sedative.

The problems begin with Black's script, which adopts a fractured structure that allows the narrative to leap back and forth in time. As DiCaprio's J. Edgar (Hoover) recounts his lengthy experiences near the end of his life, we are subjected to a series of dry flashbacks that touch upon several of the important events that occurred during his tenure as the director of the FBI. There's the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby and the rise of the playfully monikered gangsters and the assassination of JFK. These are all big moments in 20th century American history, but the flabby, floppy script saps the events of any meaning, instead reducing them to simple plot points that fade into the background like everything else in the movie.

The constant return to an aging Edgar (the name he goes by for most of the movie) jumbles the narrative unnecessarily and tries pitifully to mask the fact that this is really just a basic a-to-b storyline told without any imagination. Eastwood's direction does nothing to liven up the flat writing. His movies often drag on a bit too long and he's adamant about disregarding subtlety, but his creased and careful skills as a storyteller usually result in a touching, engaging movie. But here, we get all of the bad and none of the good. The movie certainly drags on too long, pretty much overstaying its welcome somewhere in the midst of its facile first act. And it only gets worse from there.

Edgar's experiences sound interesting on paper, but they're entirely bland and unexciting in the context of the movie. The narrative flatlines the whole way through, unable to register even a measly blip during the aforementioned big events. The important stuff holds no more dramatic weight than the arbitrary nonsense, such as an ill-conceived meeting with Shirley Temple (Emily Alyn Lind, proving with just a few seconds on screen that she does a really awful Shirley Temple impersonation). There's no scope to this picture, leaving both the epic and the intimate to languish lamely in the middle. Everything sort of oozes together like a big melted pile of mouldy cheese, which may be an intentional ode to the movie's dreadful makeup work. If so, perhaps I was wrong about the movie having no imagination.

It also seems rather obvious that the movie has no sense of humour, but then that would mean the aging makeup was actually intended to be taken seriously. And there's no way that's happening, considering the comical misuse of latex that causes DiCaprio and costars Armie Hammer and Naomi Watts to look like rubber zombies. It's liver spots galore with enough jowls to make even the proudest turkey jealous. And it's all so laughably constricting, giving the actors no room to move or do anything but look stiffly stupid. The failures of the makeup department are one of several elements that highlight the movie's unintentional hilarity. It's as though J. Edgar is a comedy movie hidden inside the body of a dramatic one. Terrified to come out of the closet (much like its repressed protagonist), the movie tries to pass itself off as something it's not. It's a shame, because the awful latex work pretty much writes jokes on its own.

The actors would probably like to blame the makeup, too, but while it does them no favours, the performers stumble in all time periods, young and old. DiCaprio's string of strong performances comes to an end here with his dedicated, though unconvincing turn as a man with a whole lot of baggage. There are many traits to explore, but DiCaprio seems hung up on utilizing his now familiar bag of tricks to create a predictable performance that feels like cheap mimicry. Watts plays Edgar's personal secretary Helen Gandy and she gets away with being merely forgettable. The real performance bomb of the piece is delivered by Armie Hammer, who plays Edgar's right-hand man and possible lover Clyde Tolson. Hammer looks ridiculously confused the entire time, acting like a wide-eyed kid in his early years and a stationary latex monster in his later ones. Hammer's entire performance is so clumsily exaggerated that snickering laughter becomes the only logical response to his onscreen appearances.

All of this silliness is in service of another bad biopic. There are plenty of them out there, but J. Edgar stands out because it squanders so much potential and then has the gall to ask us to watch it with a straight face. The writing and directing and acting all do a collective face plant. The narrative never settles into a groove and instead wiggles and wobbles out of control like an unruly bowl of Jell-O. But such an analogy isn't entirely fair because Jell-O is delicious and this movie is about as tasty as a pair of pants. This J. Edgar isn't edible or flavourful or entertaining or memorable for any reasons that aren't related to bad makeup and Armie Hammer's goofball excuse for a performance. This J. Edgar is just plain sleep-inducing. It's also a complete mess devoid of any recognizable human emotion (or even recognizable human beings, thanks to all that latex). It's basically a cinematic challenge to fight through the darkness and stay awake. Suddenly, that J of the title is looking a whole lot like some ZZZs.