The Shipping News (2001)
Grade: C-
Cast: Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett
Director: Lasse Hallstrom
Rated R for some language, sexuality, and disturbing images.


Not many movies come along as bizarre and downbeat as “The Shipping News”. It’s a Miramax film directed by Lasse Hallstrom and based on a popular book, so it was supposed to be nominated for all sorts of awards, like 1999’s decent “The Cider House Rules”, and 2000’s “Chocolat”, which I still haven’t seen. Thankfully, “The Shipping News” broke the curse. It’s just too bad the movie to break the curse had to be such an unbearable one.

Yep, I’m not lying. “The Shipping News” is bad. It gives us our biggest glimpse ever of the untalented side of Kevin Spacey, and it ain’t pretty. Spacey not only gives his personal worst performance (and this is from one of my favorite actors), but he gives one of 2001’s worst lead performances. Of course, let’s be fair to Spacey—he had a bad character to work with.

Perhaps the place for reconstruction ought to have been the script, which is adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that must be good because of all its acclaim, but seems to be given a treatment here as if the screenwriter read, adapted, got bored, skipped a few chapters, completely misunderstood what came next, and adapted it too. It’s even a less effective cinematic adaptation than Michael Mann’s “Manhunter”, but with some major players in the production on heavy downers. They apparently wanted to make things as uninteresting and quirky as possible, and they’ve succeeded. Yep, “The Shipping News” is a film filled to the brim with such uninteresting oddities as a Newfoundland-dwelling senior citizen who happens to be a lesbian and whose brother raped her when she was 12, thus creating demons and an abortion on her emotional resume; psychotic children parented by complete losers as well as complete losers fathered by men who raped their sister when she was 12; Cate Blanchett being sexier than Julianne Moore; inconsistent accents; severed heads in coolers; nose-slicing pirates who happen to be relatives of the incestuous lesbian and her nephew, the loser; drownings falsely created to cover up relationship issues; doll-hammering children; and frequent intellectual comparisons to donuts. Just priceless, isn’t it? Those folks that say psychiatrists don’t get paid enough may be on to something.

I’ll fill in the spaces left as an effect to my out-of-context run-by of events: Quoyle (Spacey) is the loser, whose bitch of a girlfriend (Cate Blanchett, very good here) has just died in a car crash after putting their daughter up on the black market. His parents have just died, and his aunt comes by and invites him to Newfoundland to start a new life, because we all know a little beautiful cinematography is all one needs to forget a triple tragedy. He meets Wavey (Moore, who isn’t as bad as Spacey, but has definitely seen better days), they fall in love, he gets a job for a newspaper, and the movie continues sucking. Must I further review the plot? If you watch it, you will know from the first minute of film exactly how it’s going to turn out. Well, maybe not exactly. I personally couldn’t have predicted the preteen sibling sex.

I’m still mystified as to how anyone thought this movie would be good. The ingredients are right, but the story is so abnormal and dumb that “The Shipping News” had no chance from the start. I’m sure it made a great book, but a move that refuses to be longer than 111 minutes is only going to be able to skim the surface. Thus, so many bizarre occurrences and character traits are bound to seem messed up to the average viewer. It doesn’t help that the pacing is so awkward that certain scenes seem like 111 minutes by themselves. As the film got progressively duller, and I realized things weren’t going to get better, my favorite button on the DVD remote control was the one that told me how much time was left until it was over.

I’m not done describing what a horrible character Quoyle is. He has about as much presence as Ed Crane of “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, but the Coen brothers had a point when they made Crane into a ghost of a character. We should be able to identify with Quoyle. Instead, we get a loser stumbling around with a dumbstruck face as he floats from one tragedy to another, and Spacey recites dialogue that is supposed to be cutely funny. Well, it is funny. Funny like “Behind The Music” on Vanilla Ice.

I suppose this doesn’t give you an idea of the creepy insanity of “The Shipping News” and the vomit-inducing predictability of its good intentions. I ought to give you a better example. Quoyle comes home to see his daughter taking a hammer and smacking her doll in the face with it. Quoyle asks her why she is doing it. Her response? “Because she’s boring.”* Quoyle shrugs as if to say, “fair enough”. Later, the following conversation actually occurs:

Quoyle: Yesterday, I found her bashing her doll’s brains in with a hammer.

Wavey: Don’t be silly. Dolls don’t have brains.

Interpret that any way you want to.


-Alex, August 2002

* - Note (10/25/02): I had a betta fish that I had owned for months (since March 15th, to be precise; don't ask why I remember that). Anyway, my point is, last night I flushed the poor thing down the toilet---while it was still alive. The blue fish (named Leon) looked me in the eyes as he went down the toilet (I swear!), and I started feeling guilty. I asked myself just why I did this, and what was my response? "Because he was boring." Maybe "The Shipping News" was a more influential experience than I am willing to admit.