| Good Will Hunting, as I am sure by now you have already heard, is a really good movie. It's kind of a guy-bonding kind of Beaches movie, with men crying and identifying and so on. I just thought it had a supremely and surprisingly mature, sophisticated script, especially considering the age of its authors. |
| Matt Damon (The Rainmaker) stars, and with supporting actor Ben Affleck (Chasing Amy), wrote a really amazing screenplay. Damon plays a kind of loserly custodian type who happens to be a genius, and Affleck is his best friend who is not. Generally it seems that people who write supernormal characters for themselves fall into that Kevin Costner trap of self-aggrandizing moronic yabbering, but not so with these guys. |
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Damon writes himself as a sympathetic guy who is what he is but doesn't care to be so, who loves his beer-swilling friends but happens to have an extraordinary wealth of book knowledge and comprehension. What makes the story into gold is how they wrote the older characters in the film (Robin Williams' psychologist and Skellar Skarsgard's math professor) as people actually wiser than the genius star.
Williams in particular spends a great deal of the movie pointing out Damon's flaws and his immaturity. All the "adults" have interesting character development, rather than just being dads or bad guys or just bitter shadows behind the star's genius. |
| At no point do we feel that Damon is unavailable to us or that he himself thinks he is just hot stuff. I especially appreciated Will Hunting (the character, sorry!)'s total lack of passion or drive for anything. Damon gets involved with Minnie Driver, and she is not just a babe for him to play with while the plot skims along, driven by Danny Elfman's unElfmanesque score. Driver is great and everyone is great. It's all I can say, really. |
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I didn't cry, as some of my men friends have, because I guess women don't havethese same emotional walls and infallibility standards that men do. I know I
will get crap for that but I hope you know what I mean.
Directed by Gus Van Sandt, a man one could say is not known for churning outcrowd-pleasers, Good Will Hunting seems to be totally loyal to the material and not concerned with Hollywoodizing it up. Pulp Fiction producer LawrenceBender may have helped Van Sandt along here. |
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Robin Williams, I am pleased to say, is back where I love him most - playinggently humorous but deeply heartfelt characters. He can still be real andfunny and from the hip, but with his wisdom. A monologue he has, done almostentirely in one long, loving shot, is the best Robin Williams I have seen in forever.
So, you know, go see it. |
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