The Postman Review
by Serdar Yegulalp (syegul AT ix DOT netcom DOT com)December 30th, 1997
The Postman (1997) 1/2 *
A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp
Copyright 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: Why is this movie three hours long? Because it's too stupid to know when to stop.
THE POSTMAN may be the single dumbest movie I've ever seen. Not the worst -- I still leave that accolade to be divided between STARSHIP TROOPERS and MONEY TRAIN -- but by far the dumbest. It takes a situation that had plenty of possibilities, which are all better examined in the David Brin novel that THE POSTMAN has been sensessly cannibalized from, and turns them into an idiot's delight. People should be able to buy insulin along with their popcorn for this one, it's so saccharine and treacly.
Not too far into the future, America has been ravaged by a war which has shattered civilization. The exact details of this war are conveniently omitted -- I imagine they felt "it wasn't important", or some other such lame writer's left-handed excuse. Omitting critical detail is not the same thing as creative restraint, and in this movie they add up to glaring empty places in the story.
Wandering through the shattered landscape (snore) is a man with no name (double snore) who comes across the uniform and truck of a dead mailman. He's used to sleazing his way from one end of hell to the other, so he puts on the uniform (hey, it's in pretty good shape for a guy who's been dead at LEAST a decade!) and tries to scam whatever little pockets of civilization are left into offering him shelter, by pretending to be a letter carrier for the "Restored United States of America".
We are supposed to believe that the movie is about how this drifted inspires people by his "example". Wrong: the movie is not about anything, because it's too busy drowning in jackass cliches and godawful writing to ever manage a Statement of Purpose. It's one part Western, one part MAD MAX and one part Hollywood self-congratulatory sentimentalism, none of which works. It's also an ass- (and bladder-) breaking three hours. TITANIC, in comparison, felt half as long because it was so watchable and so swift on its feet. THE POSTMAN is a lumbering, boneheaded wreck of a movie that doens't know when to lie down and give up.
The silliness is just unstoppable. One painfully unfunny scene has Costner's character trying to do Shakespeare from memory (and we learn, over and over and over again, that he can't do it without cue cards). Another one has him doing his letter-carrying rounds on horseback, shot in such agonizing slow motion that we want to shout instructions at the projectionist. Maybe when this is released on tape and in a deluxe CAV letterboxed collector's edition laserdisc set (as it inevitably will be), we can thumb the fast-forward and make up for Costner's hamhandedness in the director's chair.
Monty Python once had a recurring character they named D.P. Gumby, an utter dimwit who approached everything from brain surgery to flower arranging with granite-jawed seriousness. Watching THE POSTMAN, I felt many associations could be drawn between Mr. Gumby and Kevin Costner as a filmmaker. Costner is just so ploddingly, heart-rendingly, goddamned *earnest* in this movie -- both as an actor and as the creative mind behind it -- that he fails to notice he's making a complete and utter fool of himself.
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