PARK CITY – In theory, Nick Hornby’s 2009 novel “Juliet, Naked” would seem like a slam-dunk romantic comedy that any studio or financier would have jumped at the chance to make. Annie (Rose Byrne), a woman living in a small town in England engages in an email correspondence with a once famous American rock musician, Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke), who disappeared twenty years prior, leaving only the positively reviewed album Juliet as his legacy. The woman’s boyfriend, Duncan (Chris O’Dowd), just happens to be a hardcore fan of the rock star and the administrator of a fan site obsessed with his music and speculating over what happened to him. There’s transatlantic romance, a love triangle and an opportunity to make fun of an abundance of music and internet clichés. Sadly, even with the contributions of four screenwriters and the still underrated talents of Byrne, the takeaway after it debuted at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival was that as a movie it simply doesn’t work.
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The film begins with an internet video clip of Duncan discussing yet another theory about the meaning behind Juliet and Tucker’s whereabouts for his website’s audience. It’s supposed to clue us in to how fanatical Duncan is which is also funny, right? (Perhaps it should be.) Annie, meanwhile, is living out a seemingly mundane existence as the unofficial curator of the town’s museum where putting on even the simplest of exhibitions means navigating a minefield of local town politics. It doesn’t help that her decade long relationship with Duncan has hit a rut mostly due to his fixation on Tucker and his own self-absorbed opinions (Duncan makes a living as a film professor and the movie can’t even adequately poke fun at that). When Duncan ends up having an affair with a new colleague at the university it’s sort of a relief because he’s such a jerk you can’t imagine while Annie stuck it out this long with him to begin with.
Tucker, on the other hand, has been lounging around at his ex’s upstate New York farm helping raise one of his five – yes, five – kids from three different mothers. When his oldest Lizzie (Ayoola Smart) arrives for a visit, he’s confronted with the shocking fact he’s about to become a grandfather. It eventually gives him motivation to get off his ass and head across the Atlantic to visit her in England, where she’s giving birth to his first grandchild. It’s also an excuse to try and meet Annie with whom he’s been sending emails back and forth ever since he responded to one of her comments on Duncan’s fan site message board. And, no, Duncan has no idea his ex has discovered what happened to his idol, but, don’t worry, it’s obvious he will eventually.
So, yes, there’s a lot of plot to go around and that’s without even touching on Tucker’s backstory, his relationships (or lack of) with his offspring, and what happens when he finally meets Annie and Duncan (no spoiler here: it’s captured in the only official image of the movie so far). That may explain why Tamara Jenkins (“The Savages”), Evgenia Peretz, Phil Alden Robinson (“Field of Dreams”) and Jim Taylor (“Sideways”) all contributed in some way to the adaptation. By the way, that’s an unusual number of screenwriters for an independent film.
Part of the problem with “Juliet” is director Jesse Peretz can’t seem to decide what he wants this movie to be. Is it a charming Working Title-style romantic comedy (they’re the production company behind “High Fidelity” and “Bridget Jones’ Diary“)? Is it farcical? Is it a broad studio comedy? Is it Judd Apatow-esque? (Apatow is notably one of the movie’s producers). The tone is so off it makes the events in the picture increasingly hard to believe and without any true laugh out loud moments that takes you right out of the movie. Peretz has done some fine work in television including the pilot for “GLOW” and eighteen episodes of “Girls,” but this is his third attempt at a cinematic comedy after 2006’s “The Ex” and 2012’s “Our Idiot Brother” that falls completely flat. Are we noticing a trend here?
As expected, Byrne does her best to keep things afloat giving Annie a depth the script lacks. You simply wish her comedic talents were fully utilized and she wasn’t playing the “straight” woman in scene after scene. On paper O’Dowd seems like a fantastic choice for Duncan, but again, the material simply doesn’t give him enough to work with and he’s shockingly forgettable. The biggest disappointment, however, has to be Hawke. He has almost zero chemistry with Byrne and Peretz’s bland direction doesn’t showcase his talents whatsoever. He often seems like he’s in another version of this movie, and it’s even less funny than Peretz’s picture (it’s also worth noting this is only the second comedy Hawke has starred in this century).
When adapted for the big screen, Hornby’s novels have ranged from great (“About a Boy,” “High Fidelity”) to mediocre (“Fever Pitch”) to disappointing (“A Long Way Down,” “Slam”). “Juliet, Naked” appeared to be the perfect book to stand alongside the best of Hornby’s adaptations and provide some sharp commentary about fandom, the music business and relationships for those pushing 40, but hitting the right note is clearly never easy no matter who wrote the source material to begin with. [C]
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