Fingers, arms, eyes, and legs crossed McConaughey doesn't once again snatch defeat from the jaws of victory here.
When he's ‘on,’ I absolutely adore the guy ("All right, all right, all right!"), but foul stinkers like The Beach Bum, Serenity, and Killer Joe are bleach to the senses (no matter one’s imagined ‘target demo’ or how much a studio might wanna believe Dallas’s Magic Mike abs or buttocks can carry the day).
His more ruminative Lincoln-commercial-like outings (for example, The Sea of Trees) tend to drop like stones midway through Act II (though my two McFavorites include Mud and Interstellar, the latter producing tremendous weeping fits when McC's character says goodbye to his daughter for what winds up being the rest of her life). Unlike Ad Astra and Lucy In the Sky (which were DOA because they were Nothing Burgers), Interstellar had tons to say—philosophically, understatedly, yet powerfully and provocatively—proving once again that less is more.
McC’s appeared in nearly 70 productions in 27 years now, that handful of which has either mesmerized or motivated (also see Gold or We Are Marshall), but this puts his success rate (in my tiny 2-cent Moleskin) at around 6%.
Art is tricky (all that 'beholder' and 'taste' stuff), but I’m wanting more for him—and from him.
* * *
I treasure that line from 2018’s Mission: Impossible—Fallout when Henry Cavill (Agent Walker) barks “Hope is not a strategy!” and Rebecca Ferguson (Ilsa Faust) quips back, “You must be new here.”
The Gentlemen being Matt’s big 2020 release (assuming we exclude Sing 2, right?)—and my being bone-weary of McVehicles that sputter and spew without going anywhere—hope is indeed the only strategy and, God willing, we’ll have some bodacious alrighty fun at the box office together.
p.s. It sure is good to see Hugh Grant again.
p.p.s. Just saw it. Loved it. Hugh Grant is phenomenal. Only nit? 37 completely unnecessary occurrences of the c-word. Otherwise, it’s pitch-perfect.
