The Door in the Floor Review
by Ryan Ellis (flickershows AT hotmail DOT com)July 26th, 2004
The Door In The Floor
reviewed by Ryan Ellis
July 22, 2004
My Tagline--Doors & Floors Cause More & More Snores
'The Door In The Floor' moves like Frankenstein's monster; it lurches in fits and starts from one place to another. The plot gears aren't just grinding in this picture, the transmission plummets into a very deep ditch. I'm not sure if John Irving's novel, "A Widow For One Year", is to blame for the tonal problems or if writer/director Tod Williams should be held responsible. Movies like this practically shout, “Lookit me, I'm being quirky!” Because they aren't designed to be money-sucking blockbusters in the first place, they're allowed to be funnysadtragicweird. Williams tries to include every bit of that kind of texture and, with uncanny ability, he fails to find success with any of it. This movie just doesn't work and I was tempted to ask my co-viewers if they cared about it any less than I did.
The reliable Jeff Bridges plays Ted Cole, a well-known writer of children's stories. He likes to draw the pictures for his own books too, using nude women to pose in all sorts of positions. He and his distraught wife, Marion (Kim Basinger), are separating. Their 2 teenaged sons died a while ago. We find out how towards the end, in a grisly scene shot with restraint and tact. Their pre-school daughter, Ruth (Elle Fanning), is a handful and she's obsessed with the lovingly framed photos of the brothers she hardly knew. Marion has gone into zombie mode and Ted is messed up too, although he's the only one who seems to be trying to get on with his life. Eddie (Jon Foster) is hired to be Ted's assistant for the summer, which mostly consists of being a chauffeur and a gopher. The job ends up having nothing to do with writing, which must be a drag for an aspiring writer who's supposed to be learning valuable lessons from a successful author. Trouble brews when a May-December romance begins and Eddie finds his lucky way into Marion's sad-sack pants.
So there's a lot going on here. Whenever you blink, there's a new theme. The film's title refers to one of Ted's dark stories. The metaphorical and literal meaning of “door in the floor” is sprinkled throughout, never accomplishing much of anything beyond reminding you of the film's title. I heard women around me laughing quite often during this flick, always at Bridges' narcissistic antics. Sure, he's funny in a forced sort of way---nothing like Dude the stoner in 'The Big Lebowski', where Bridges never tried for laughs and got them anyway---but I wonder if he was given too much leeway to make this guy into such a kook. Even if he's really just a weirdo asshole, at least he's trying to spruce things up. My broken armrest was livelier than Foster. The still-sexy Basinger made me want to commit suicide…or fall asleep. She's in mourning, yes, but movie grief doesn't have to be so dull. The love triangle never goes anywhere, but I was grateful that the revelations weren't handled as perfunctorily as is the Hollywood custom. After all, Ted is sleeping with one of his models, Evelyn (Mimi Rogers, who's wasted and degraded almost as much as her character), so he can't be throwing too many sharp stones at his estranged wife.
Characters overreact to some things and under-react to others. You never get the sense that Eddie is thrilled to be boffing the woman of his dreams, even though she throws herself at him soon after finding him whacking off to her undies. Geez, man, you're in bed with an Oscar winner! Aren't you having fun yet? I'm sure Foster just played it the way Williams wanted, but I sit here now with no memories of him other than glum timidity. Eddie and Marion are hardly developed. They have a healthy sex life, which seemed unbelievable and rather tepid right from the start. Contrast Basinger's seduction of this dork to the way Shannon Tweed or the woman in 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' deflower their own young punks. Now THAT was sexy. I'm all for a woman/boy relationship in the movies---it's far too rare----but did anyone else find it creepy that this shattered woman is sleeping with someone who could be her son? I guess that's the point, but no one in the movie seems especially bothered by it. Oh well, there's too much plot here anyway. No room for debate about symbolic incest…
Diane Keaton was deified last year for playing herself in the smarmy 'Something's Gotta Give'. She was allowed to be sexy & interesting and the movie made damn sure you knew how just how attractive she is, which I found to be a counter-productive to the obvious fact that she never stopped being sexy and interesting. Hollywood usually shuts its door to the carnal pleasure room when women hit 40, but Keaton and Basinger (who's now 50) are exactly the kinds of women that any man should consider himself luck to snag. Too bad it takes putrid crap from the likes of Nancy Meyers or Williams' arthouse mess to declare that mature women can still be worthy of our love. Anyone with a working brain knew that already.
As for the toddler demographic, Fanning isn't given much to do except be cute in some scenes and shrill in others. Nevertheless, I'd like stock in whatever they put in the Fanning family's cereal. Big sister Dakota is clearly a child prodigy, and now little sister Elle has come along to stand toe to little toe with her adult co-stars. W.C. Fields would hate this kid, what with all her upstaging and everything. I would have preferred to see a story about the girl and her father because the other mopes just get in the way. For all the life that Bridges tries to slap into the production, only his youngest co-star is remotely worthy of carrying a single scene with him. They're both trying too hard, but that's better than the dead-as-Dillinger effort put forth by the other actors.
I really don't know what the target audience is for this movie. The sparse audience around me was comprised of older folks, mostly women. If they enjoyed this numbing film, are they just living vicariously through the former Mrs. Baldwin? Do they want a piece of the teenaged wussy beefcake too? I'm not judging, just asking. I can understand THAT. But surely they weren't suckered by the lame jokes or the bizarre left turns or the sudden cartoonish violence or the inconsistent characters in 'The Door In The Floor'. Were they?
Who do you root for anyway? The oft-nude author with the floppy hat and the manic-depressive mood swings? The somnambulant trophy wife? The dumb kid with extraordinarily good fortune who has no thoughts beyond what the Cole family tells him to have? The obsessive compulsive 4 year old? The victimized gardener who turns up for comic relief in the closing moments? Root for the final fade to black because that means you can get back into the summer sun and enjoy yourself again. Although I'd never bother to read it, I'm curious to know what Irving's book is really about. Did Williams completely botch it or was the novel just as screwed up as the movie? If I cared, I might follow that up and provide an answer. Since I don't, I think I'll stop sniping and go watch another movie---a good movie---instead.
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