At First Sight Review
by Jamie Peck (darth_fluff AT yahoo DOT com)June 13th, 1999
AT FIRST SIGHT
Reviewed by Jamie Peck
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Rating: ** (out of ****)
MGM / 2:08 / 1999 / PG-13 (language, thematic material, strip-club nudity, sexuality)
Cast: Val Kilmer; Mira Sorvino; Kelly McGillis; Nathan Lane; Bruce Davison; Steven Weber; Ken Howard
Director: Irwin Winkler
Screenplay: Steve Levitt; Irwin Winkler; Rob Cowan
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Here's an ironic oddity: a movie about overcoming a handicap that, despite a dearth of assets, never quite overcomes its own handicaps. Notable for the trivia it offers rather than for presenting a well-rounded portrait of disability, "At First Sight" tells an immensely crowded tale adapted from a case study in Dr. Oliver Sacks' 1995 non-fiction novel "An Anthropologist on Mars." But check out Penny Marshall's "Awakenings" for a stronger Sacks adaptation, as "Sight" boasts similar high-quality acting and an engrossing set-up, but lacks the eventual focus and smarts of its '90 counterpart. Oh, well. At least it settles the alleged existence of a special Braille "Playboy" once and for all.
Photogenic leads Val Kilmer and Mira Sorvino click as a blind masseur (he) and a traveling architect (she) who fall deeply in love after an apparently superlative back-rub moves her to tears a goofy sequence saved, like many others, by their generated chemistry. Not far into the affair, Sorvino locates a cure for Kilmer's nearly life-long affliction: miracle eye surgery that restores his vision but comes with damaging physical and mental side-effects, like lots of blurry, distorted camera angles. At this point, interest in the story reaches its pinnacle as Kilmer grapples with his newfound sense. Then, the film goes in directions that don't make much sense.
Kilmer's omnipresent Stevie Wonder-esque smile during all of this will cause unintentional laughs for some, but his performance is still an improbable stretch he executes admirably. Sorvino's supposed to be a brain, but thanks to some unfortunate scripting, she comes off like the air-headed dealership clerk she so wonderfully played in "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion." Kelly McGillis lends fine support as Kilmer's stolid sister, and even Nathan Lane ("The Birdcage") pops up for a few scenes as a visual therapist described by colleagues as "unorthodox," though his "unorthodox" methods seem to stem less from narrative necessity than a need for comic relief.
Further distracting from the highly intriguing central to-see-or-not-to-see dynamics and bogging down the midsection considerably, inflating this puppy out past two interminable hours are a seemingly endless (but inexplicit) series of sex-in-the-shadows montages and a pair of superfluous subplots involving Kilmer's search for his estranged father and Sorvino's relationship with her ex-husband. We don't care, many are likely to say. Even a TV-movie-of-the-week, which is the status the overloaded "At First Sight" struggles to overcome, would have jettisoned this padding in favor of a leaner, meaner and therefore more effective message.
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© 1999 Jamie Peck
E-mail: [email protected]
Visit The Reel Deal Online: http://www.gl.umbc.edu/~jpeck1/ "Maybe another 200 cigarettes would have helped; coughing would be better than some of this dialogue." Roger Ebert on "200 Cigarettes"
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