It will sound dismissive, but there’s basically a good, rational reason “The Soloist,” was moved out of Oscar season and into its oddly-timed April 24 release and that’s simply because it’s just not Oscar caliber material despite the acting talents (Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx) and the filmmakers pedigree (Oscar nominated Joe Wright whose “Atonement” was up for 7 Academy statuettes in 2007).
Many in the industry (including us) assumed a story about a journalist (RDJ) who befriends (and sort of rescues, though that in of itself is tricky) a homeless schizophrenic musician (Fox) would suffer from excessive sentimentality and or cloyingly uplifting overtones, but the only marginally engaging picture is in no way the bathetic tearjerker that some might have expected (and hell a sappy weepfest like “Departures” didn’t do too shabby at Oscar time), nor is it particularly inspirational, celebratory or affective.
Curiously enough, dicey and tenuous script elements that could have taken away from the emotional credibility in this odd couple friendship are jettisoned in the final movie, but the mental illness genre-ed picture actually doesn’t greatly benefit from the removal of these subplot and still feels somewhat emotionally distant.
While well-handled overall with no glaring egregious moments (for the most part), “The Soloist” is alternatively semi-overwrought at times or far two subtle and both Downey and Foxx feel contained and boxed-in; like they’re not free to breathe and deliver their best.
By no means bad, “The Soloist,” however is a minor picture that fails to resonate or capture any magnetic qualities between the odd pairing.
Robert Downey Jr. plays his aloof, all-business character as not an entirely sympathetic and or compassionate man, and when he evinces empathetic qualities, we see them, but don’t necessarily feel them. A tearjerking moment of frustration appears contrived and partially out of nowhere (as if an edit went wrong or a crucial scene was excised). A half baked subplot with his ex-wife and newsroom boss (Catherine Keener) seems like an obligatory reprieve and rather rote.
Largely emotionally disconnected (much like “Atonement” outside of the sappy, for-the-fences conclusion), when Wright dutifully tries to convey a sense of awe and wonder from Fox’s paranoid schizophrenic, cello-prodigy playing the choices are either laughably cornball (an ill-conceived sequence following CGI pigeons attempting to depict musically sonorous heights) or silly and ineffectual (a laser-light-like show of inner reality illustrating music strokes as blasts of color which isn’t offensive, but endures long enough to lose its potency).
As discussed earlier in the week, a potentially relevant thread about the death of the newspaper (Downey’s character does write a humanist column for the L.A. Times after all which is what leads him to Foxx) is neutered almost to the edge of pointlessness (see: the reason why his character has interest in the first place).
It’s difficult to pinpoint what exactly prevents the pic from connecting (perhaps they lost their way in the editing room), but in short, “The Soloist” just doesn’t work, doest convince us of much and fails to really illuminate much about the human condition (let alone the complicated issues of assisting the mentally ill). At its worst the film could have been overly beautiful and feelgood, instead it’s rather horizontal and uninspired which is absolutely not what you want when attempting to convey the wonders of symphonic connection, the value of friendship and the vagaries of life. [B-]