Four-part bio-pic (bio-streamer?) on Archie Leach (aka Cary Grant) is decent enough and dutiful, running about three hours, but ultimately held back by two big missteps. First: trying to cover a whole life (these things better when a moment in time tells the tale - see BEING THE RICARDOS/’21 (https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2021/12/being-ricardos-2021.html); Second: using Dyan Cannon’s memoir on their marriage as a hub to spin the story off of. Very Dyan-centric in spite of using Grant’s late-in-life lecture tours as an easy organizing principle. What keeps you interested (at least if you’re a movie-bio maven) is seeing how much Grant’s formative years mirror the life & hard times of Charles Chaplin. Childhood poverty; absent father; mentally unstable mother; knockabout stage company saving him, giving direction and bringing him to America; quick Hollywood success; multiple unhappy marriages, etc. Just as interesting is seeing how much this film mirrors the faults of Richard Attenborough’s CHAPLIN/’92. Though none of the acting here comparable with Robert Downey Jr. & Kevin Kline’s Chaplin/Fairbanks act. But since we never get fully hooked into the story, we spend too much time noting who does (and who doesn’t) ‘pass’ as the famous celebrity they get to play. Impersonation or recreation? Laura Aikman does Cannon to a ‘T’; Jason Isaacs hit-and-miss as Cary. (Is that Robert De Niro under the clipped accent?)
Rather than relaxing into the role, Isaacs relaxes out of it. Yet Grant ought to be playable, didn’t he create the man he played in life & on screen from common Cockney clay? As presented here, he’s annoyingly overprotective & over-controlling, out of his depth when he and the much younger Cannon hit the cultural/generational ‘70s divide. A bit of a fuddy-duddy at home, Grant still comes across rather well. And why not with an adoring daughter as Exec Producer.
READ ALL ABOUT IT/LINK: People tend to look askance when they read David Thompson, in his top-rated ‘Biographical Dictionary of Film’ on Grant: ‘There is a major but very difficult realization that needs to be reached about Grant - difficult, that is, for many people who like to think they take the art of film seriously. As well as being a leading box-office draw for some thirty years, the epitome of the man-about-town, as well as being ex-husband of Virginia Cherrill, Barbara Hutton, Betsy Drake, and Dyan Cannon, as well as the retired actor, still handsome executive of a perfume company - as well as all these things, he was the best and most important actor in the history of cinema.’ Doubt Thompson? Hit this LINK to see some evidence. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=cary+grant
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