A Love Song For Bobby Long Review
by Harvey S. Karten (harveycritic AT cs DOT com)December 13th, 2004
A LOVE SONG FOR BOBBY LONG
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Columbia Tristar/El Camino Pictures
Grade: B-
Directed by: Shainee Gabel
Written by: Shainee Gabel, inspired by Ronald Everett Capps's novel "Off East Magazine St."
Cast: John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson, Gabriel Macht, Deborah Kara Unger, Dane Rhodes
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 11/30/04
Imagine that you've found out that your mother has died. You return from where you've been staying temporarily with your boyfriend (or girlfriend) intending to move into your mother's house, only to find two men already living there who insist that your mom willed her house to all three of you, a one-third share for each. What do you do? Probably the normal thing is to get right back to where you were staying and give up your moving plans, but when you consider that you are no longer compatible with your boyfriend (or girlfriend), you're not so eager to return. You move into your new 1/3 place, fingers crossed.
In her debut as a director, scripter Shainee Gabel posits a story about the unfolding relationship of three similar people–two men who have been in residence for a while at the deceased woman's place and an 18-year-old girl who has the gumption to take up residence with new and challenging roommates. "A Love Song for Bobby Long" moves as slowly and deliberately as you'd expect, since it describes the lives of three from a hot and humid August summer down through the following freezing winter, the ramshackle house without air conditioning or sufficient heat. John Travolta takes on the role of a man in his late forties, the title character Bobby Long, a former English professor whose alcoholism has led him into a dissolute life together with his younger protege, Lawson (Gabriel Macht). Lawson has been spending years trying to write a novel about Bobby Long, but his drinking and his low self-image are obvious distractions. The girl, Purslane or Pursy (Scarlett Johansson), has been estranged from her mother, though what she discovers about the woman toward the conclusion of the tale is given a significance out of proportion to its real import.
Despite the twist that sheds new light on the three tentative residents, there are no great surprises in the plot. The film exists mostly as a showcase for the considerable acting talents of John Travolta and Scarlett Johansson, the latter known by film buffs for her understated yet sexually tense role in Peter Webber's "Girl With a Pearl Earring"–about an unassuming girl who seeks a place in the home of the famous artist, Johannes Vermeer. John Travolta comes across as we have never seen him before, a grizzled man with gray hair whose drunken shuffle and bent frame makes him look a decade or so older.
The quotes from the great literary minds of the last century–Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, George Sand–would be pretentious in a different setting, but after all we're eavesdropping on a lit professor and his ardent follower who are preparing Pursy, a high-school dropout, to get her GED and even to enroll in college. "A Love Song for Bobby Long," which also features barkeep Georgianna (Deborah Kara Unger) as Lawson's girlfriend, an attractive woman who has tried unsuccessfully to get Lawson to move in with her, is claustrophobic enough to play out well on the legitimate stage. As cinema, despite the crackerjack performances from some crusty characters and one strong, yet vulnerable young woman, this will satisfy a special audience that can adapt to its naturalism, but is not opened up sufficiently to make a major dent as a film.
Rated R. 119 minutes. © 2004 by Harvey Karten
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