Unlike the waters that flow over the mighty Niagara falls that bookend this feature, "Niagara, Niagara" haphazardly meanders instead of flowing in a logical manner, plods when it should be moving at a steady clip, and is anything but dramatically majestic. While it feels like it wants to be something important, it's a hodgepodge of ideas and its execution is certainly nothing special.
Much of that can be attributed to first-time director Bob Gosse and fellow novice screenwriter Matthew Weiss. While they've got some interesting material -- including a character afflicted with Tourette's Syndrome and two main characters who are disengaged from society -- the film is a maddening, meandering mess. Events come and go without apparent reasons, and character motivations are absent or at best incomprehensible.
While the idea of these "lost souls" is interesting, we know next to nothing about either of the lead characters, or anything about the people they encounter. I assume we're supposed to immediately care for them by default due to their problems, but that compassionate feeling simply never develops. We constantly watch from a distance and never connect with them.
With as much time as this "couple" spends on the run, it would have been easy to interject some scenes to let us into the characters' lives. Instead, all we get are some odd dental references -- her mom is always off going to the dentist, while his dad had some teeth knocked out years ago by a belligerent cop. What we're supposed to make out of that, or other scant bits of information is never known, and consequently the film comes off feeling rather empty.
Nor do we know anything about a pharmacist who figures semi-prominently in the story, or much about Walter, the widowed farmer/junkyard owner. We never learn why he aims his gun at Seth and Marcy when first seeing them on the road, nor why he then suddenly takes them in like two lost puppies who need a home. It's a maddening experience not to have any of these matters answered, and it constantly leaves the viewer in an irritated state.
Fortunately -- or perhaps unfortunately, depending on your view of things -- the performances from the leads are interesting enough to hold your interest despite never really getting to know them. Robin Tunney ("The Craft") delivers a compelling and equally disturbing take on a person afflicted with Tourette's syndrome, but her character becomes quite annoying during the course of the film.
Granted, that's the way she's supposed to play her, and she is afflicted with a socially debilitating condition, but all of that doesn't help. Since we don't know enough about her to really care, she just becomes an irritant. For instance, Marcy is constantly fascinated with guns, and often tries to grab them from other people. Yet we don't know if this is simply an obsessive act (probably) or an unconscious or even conscious death wish -- a desperate way out of her condition (less likely, but more provocative). Even so, it's a powerful performance (that won her a best actress award at last year's Venice Film Festival), but it's just too bad we don't really care that much about her. (In fact, when a certain something happens to her during the film, a fellow critic loudly exclaimed, "Thank God!" He obviously really didn't care about her).
Henry Thomas ("E.T.," "The Suicide Kings") also delivers a decent performance, but like Tunney, he inhabits a character about whom we know very little, and thus never care about either, all of which hurts the film. The rest of the limited performances come off the same way -- all of these people are strangers to us and thus we're never able to really get involved in the film.
The other problem is that the plot just meanders about without ever having any real direction, and some of the characters' actions are equally bizarre and never explained. Although that, when coupled with the lack of identification with the characters, serves to constantly keep the audience off balance, it's never certain whether that's intentionally done, or is just a byproduct of freshmen at the helm who had some good ideas, but weren't quite sure how to properly execute them. For instance, after catching a fish for their breakfast, Walter slaps it against Seth's face and says, "I hit you with this fish...now you're a better man." Seth then replies, "Now I feel like a better man." Huh?!?!
Despite all of its problems, the topic that will bring this film to the forefront will be its inclusion of a character afflicted with Tourette's. While that's certainly an interesting subject to explore in a film, this isn't the best one. Used more like a side-condition than a major topic -- much like alcoholism or cancer -- the film fortunately doesn't go for the comic approach to this emotionally and socially debilitating disease.
Yet it also doesn't take the high road either or strongly delve into the subject. We don't learn much about it, other than that drugs will reduce its characteristics, and if that doesn't work, some booze or sex will momentarily do just fine. Unlike a film such as "Rainman" where a character becomes determined to figure out what's "wrong" with another's "problem" (albeit initially for other reasons that eventually switch around for the better), this film uses that syndrome just as a plot complication.
Without any real exploration into its causes, remedies and such, the effect is just some odd, startling behavior that isn't any fun to watch on the screen. While movies don't always have to be "fun," and we're certainly not dismissing those affected by the syndrome or those who live with or are friends of such people, the film could, and probably should, have delved deeper into the subject. As it is, it just becomes an irritant (obviously used solely to generate sympathy votes -- that it doesn't get as earlier explained) and generates the also earlier described reaction from a fellow critic.
While the film is decidedly offbeat and certainly not your typical Hollywood fair, the lack of meaning behind any motivation and the haphazard plot undermine its efforts. Featuring some decent performances -- including a standout one from Tunney that's unfortunately as irritating as it is good -- but no emotional connection to the characters, this is a feature that falls into the "could have been" category. We give "Niagara, Niagara" a 3 out of 10.
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