Welcome to Mooseport Review
by John Ulmer (johnulmer2003 AT msn DOT com)June 17th, 2004
WELCOME TO MOOSEPORT
A Film Review by John Ulmer
** / ****
"Welcome to Mooseport" is a sweet, good-natured, affiable comedy from Donald Petrie, but it is not a good movie. It is too simplistic, contrived, and willing to please its audience, rather than challenge us with something more than what is nothing short of one of the absolute worst concepts for a motion picture. This would be an acceptable premise for an episode of lead actor Ray Romano's television show "Everybody Loves Raymond" -- not a two-hour movie.
Romano plays a small-town plumber named "Handy" Harrison. He lives in Mooseport, Maine, the vacation getaway for the ex-President of the United States of America, Monroe "Eagle" Cole, who is supposedly the most famous President in history, with the best approval ratings and the only President to get a divorce while in the White House. He plays a game of golf with a ten handicap, but does not realize that secret service agents lurk around the boundaries of the golf course, "helping" his game along by throwing foul balls back onto the green. Monroe is so blind he doesn't realize any of this.
When Monroe is enticed into running for mayor of Mooseport after meeting Sally (Maura Tierney), he has no idea that Sally's boyfriend, Handy, is also running for the position. Placed in a political race against Handy, the event soon becomes a media storm, as reporters rush from all over the country to record the proceedings. Soon, Monroe is taking Sally out on a date, Handy is getting jealous, the two runner-ups scheme some nasty ideas, etc. Then, just when you think the film can't get any more stereotypical...it does.
This is a harmless film, but that doesn't mean it's any good. Romano and Hackman are a good team, but their efforts are wasted on material that would barely support a TV show. Romano hasn't had a very good film career so far, lending his vocal talents to "Ice Age" two years ago, and...that's pretty much it. His TV show is a great treat, a show I watch regularly and anticipate on DVD, but his whole shtick becomes a bit tiring after a while in "Welcome to Mooseport." There's only so many times you can react to situations the same way without becoming tiring.
Hackman, one of America's finest actors, keeps making films like these. Why?
"Wag the Dog" did this much better in 1997, satirizing the media's close links with the President. Here, when Monroe takes Sally out on a date inside a fancy local restaurant, the press sits outside, flashing cameras faced towards the large window overlooking the diner, where they can see right in and catch glimpses of the President and his date. "Oh, I get used to it after a while," Monroe says to Sally after she asks him how he can stand it. "Welcome to Mooseport" would have been a lot better if more of the movie had been like this. Instead, it comes across as a gratingly sweet, unfunny, half-satirical jab at many different things -- small towns, small town residents, Presidents, the press, political debates. It's a mess of a movie.
More on 'Welcome to Mooseport'...
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