Here’s one reason, of many, why I’ll never be a good film critic: I’m too easily distracted. This is supposed to be one of the biggest movies of the fall – directed by Robert Redford, starring pop faves Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron – but all I could think about while watching it is how unfathomably strange modern life has become for Bagger to costar Bruce McGill, who played demented mechanical genius Daniel “D-Day” Day in the 1978 anarchistic frat-boy anthem Animal House, as real-life golf pro Walter Hagen. The guy who helped inspire a generation of cafeteria mayhem is now a golfer. What has the world come to?
Set in Depression-era Savannah (filmed on the Georgia and South Carolina coasts), Bagger casts Damon as Rannulph Junah, a budding links wunderkind and all-around golden boy who comes back from the trenches of WWI a boozy, disillusioned Great Golfsby (it’s probably hereditary; his parents were obviously rather sodden when they slurred their way through his birth certificate). He’s finally persuaded to lace up spikes again eleven years later when former flame Adele Invergarden (Theron, who the producers must have felt could handle an authentic Southern accent since she’s from South Africa – all the downward latitudes sound alike, right? – but manages only a typically exaggerated Scarlett drawl), hosts an exhibition between flamboyant Hagen and legendary golf nice guy Bobby Jones (soap star Joel Gretsch) to generate business for the opulent resort inherited from her suicidal father, and wants a local on the card for p.r. purposes.
Junah looks set to make a very public ass of himself until the titular Zen caddie (Smith) wanders into town to dispense a koan per stroke (“I always figure a man’s grip on his club is like his grip on life.”) and make him a contender again, as well as help exorcise his wartime ghosts right there on the fairway (well, actually out in the woods a few yards off to the right) . Before you know it the whole town, including Junah’s ardent juvenile supporter Hardy Greaves (where did these names come from?), played with a shameless “Our Gang” Alfalfa vibe by newcomer J. Michael Moncreaf, turns out to watch them play a couple hundred holes or so.
The Legend of Bagger Vance, based on the novel by Steven Pressfield (who also wrote the silly Mick Jagger sci-fi flick Freejack and the bionic giant ape adventure King Kong Lives – like I said, it’s a weird world), gets really sappy in places, furthered by screenwriter Jeremy Leven’s (Don Juan DeMarco) penchant for such aphorisms as “you have all the gumption of a corn fritter” and “they’re happy as bugs in a bake shop” and “you melt my heart like butter on a hot muffin.” But unabashed sentimentality can work if it’s sincere enough, and Smith exudes plenty of low-keyed sincerity in a role that makes a nice change for him since it’s reasonably serious without being overly challenging. Naturally, he’s exercising this newfound dramatic confidence to next do Men in Black 2. C
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