After playing scientist & budding artist in the fact-based THEORY OF EVERYTHING/’14, Eddie Redmayne & Felicity Jones reunite as scientist & daredevil artiste in a fact-flaunting tale on mid-19th Century pioneer meteorologist James Glaisher and an invented ballyhooing female balloonist. (Glaisher’s actual flight partner a male research scientist.) Rising to dangerous record-setting heights, the pic must have looked spectacular on the big IMAX screen, but on home video, which is where this Amazon produced project quickly landed (World Theatrical Gross under 3 mill.), it’s reduced to the merely pretty. And while much is undoubtedly lost without that large-screen dynamic, just as much goes missing thru faulty story construction and a misguided decision to play the story in flashback from liftoff. Mechanical & formulaic (they go up squabbling/come down cooing; with flashback fill-ins en route between trial by weather & conflicting personalities). But we need that backstory & character ticks for the grand takeoff to make its effect. The film’s biggest set piece runs at 30% of its possibilities. Pleasant enough (with Redmayne & Jones’ likability levels how could it not be?), and showing director Tom Harper on firmer technical & dramatic ground than in his egregious WAR & PEACE mini-series. But with visual WOW factor reduced by scale, so too is the drama.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: You probably need to go back to Golden Age Hollywood (Musical Bio-Pic division) to find this level of flagrant factual flimflam. And, just as it was in those old films, it’s the least likely moment on screen that’s apt to be the one accurate thing. Here, it’s when the balloon rises at high altitude thru a squall of butterflies. A more or less true phenomenon.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Why would AMAZON 'green light' a film so dependent on spectacle only to limit its theatrical window so hardly anyone could see it properly? The financial model of these new streaming services mysterious indeed!
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