Review: Changeling (2008)

[dnb at dca.net]

CHANGELING
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 2008 David N. Butterworth

**1/2 (out of ****)


     The last time Angelina Jolie did a stint in the loony bin she wound
up winning an OscarÂ(r) for her pains (Best Supporting Actress for "Girl,
Interrupted") and I daresay that realization wasn't far from her mind
when she opted to star in Clint Eastwood's latest film Changeling, a
period drama about a single mom who's unceremoniously institutionalized
by the L.A.P.D. when her 9-year-old son goes missing, shows up five
months later, and is denounced by Christine Collins (Jolie) as not being
her son.  This happens after Collins takes "Walter" home, for a "trial
period," while the flashbulbs burst and the Police Department, who
supposedly found the boy in Dekalb, Ill., spat and polished up their
tarnished reputation.  The story (by J. Michael Straczynski) is an
earnest one, leading to one of the most despicable crimes in the annals
of American history (serial killer Gordon Stewart Northcott figures in
the latter going) but the film is an odd mix of genres that never quite
settles into the one we want to watch.  Jolie is suitably distraught and
outraged in equal amounts and her experience in "'Interrupted" has stood
her in good stead to play the bughouse scenes with conviction.  But the
film is undone by a surprising laziness on Clint's part, who telegraphs
too much too often and constantly gussies Jolie up no matter what her
situation (those famous lips are never anything but bright cherry red
and you wonder why her character feels the need to look mahvelous so
much of the time).  Although inspired by true events (the Wineville
Chicken Murders), the central conceit in the film--that a doppelganger
could dupe an individual's teachers, doctors, and peers--make
"Changeling" a pretty preposterous pill to swallow (one administered
forcefully, at the hands of brutal, one-dimensional prison guards).


--
David N. Butterworth, Film Editor
www.offoffoff.com/film | dnb at dca.net