director/screenwriter
Steven Baigelman
producers
Danny DeVito
Michael Shamberg
Stacey Sher
cinematographer
Walt Lloyd
music
Los Lobos
editor
Martin Walsh
cast
Keanu Reeves (Jjaks 'Typo' Clayton)
Cameron Diaz (Freddie Clayton)
Vincent D'Onofrio (Sam Clayton)
Delroy Lindo (Red)
Dan Aykroyd (Ben)
Courtney Love (Rhonda)
Tuesday Weld (Norma Clayton)
John Carroll Lynch (Cop)
Max Perlich (Desk Clerk)
Levon Helm (Bible Salesman)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 99m
u.s.
release: 9/13/96
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
|
The
gray landscapes, the twangy country music on the soundtrack,
the fashionably rumpled and unshaven Keanu Reeves squinting and
pouting (somewhere between contemplative and constipated) ....
For a while, I thought I was watching My Own Private Idaho,
especially during the credits, when exotic dancers in framed
portraits come to life (a swipe from the much wittier gay-porn
gag in Idaho). But this isn't Idaho, it's Minnesota --
Feeling Minnesota, to be exact. Or, to be more exact,
Unfeeling Minnesota. (The title, incidentally, is from
Soundgarden's "Outshined," which is heard in True
Romance: "I'm looking California/And feeling Minnesota."
Whatever that might mean.) The movie is one of those calculatedly
hip and quirky Gen-X marketing decisions, far too cool to engage
our emotions and too inept to engage anything else. Everyone
on the screen is stupid and passive -- passive even when they're
aggressive -- and the attempts at whimsy crash down like dead
trees.
Reeves is the semi-hero, a compulsive thief named Jjaks, whose
name is the result of a birth-certificate error. Since I don't
have the stomach to type "Jjaks" repeatedly, I will
rename him Typo. Typo drifts back into his hometown to attend
the wedding of his loutish brother Sam (Vincent D'Onofrio), whose
unwilling new bride Freddie (Cameron Diaz) falls in love with
Typo at first sight. Taking pity on Freddie, who's been forced
by local bad guy Red (Delroy Lindo) to marry Sam, Typo whisks
her away along with some of Sam's money. Thus begins a kind of
Punch-and-Judy show between the brothers, who pound each other
every time their paths cross. The one good thing I can say about
first-time writer-director Steven Baigelman is that he stages
the Typo-Sam fights naturalistically, with authentic clumsiness.
But the rest of Baigelman's direction is just as klutzy.
Feeling Minnesota is one bad screenwriting decision after
another; it could be taught in film school as an example of what
to avoid. For instance, avoid scenes that go nowhere, such as
the one set at a gas station. Sam follows Typo to this station
and promptly locks himself out of his car. So he steals a truck
hitched to a trailer carrying a show horse. What comes of this?
Nothing, except a guest appearance by Courtney Love as a waitress
who asks Sam, "Is that your horse?"
Courtney's actually one of the few reasons I didn't hit the aisle;
Baigelman gives her nothing to do, but she seems to relish the
irony of playing perhaps the sanest character in the movie. I
also liked Cameron Diaz, except that Baigelman keeps her offscreen
too long near the end (and keeps us in suspense about whether
she's dead). And I'd dearly love to see a director cast her as
something other than a ripe sex goddess.
The two leads surprised me more. D'Onofrio, a decent character
performer, overacts in every scene. I found it hard to look at
him. Reeves, not exactly Olivier, is halfway likable as the confused
Typo. After a while, I began to feel that Reeves' confusion was
real -- that he couldn't quite figure out what Feeling Minnesota
was supposed to be or where he fit into it. I could certainly
relate. |
