As we know from last year’s Sony hacks, Hollywood isn’t a particularly brave or noble place. Most people — from studio bosses to struggling actors — are just concerned with the next job.
Sean Penn or George Clooney can afford to engage politically, while B-listers busily promote their careers on Twitter and Instagram. No wonder that director Jay Roach (“Austin Powers,” “Meet the Fockers”) might yearn for bygone times in Tinsel Town; hence his wooden, ennobling tribute to the most famous screenwriter among the Hollywood Ten, who were blacklisted by the studios during the great red scare of the Cold War era.
This is a distant chapter in American history, let alone Hollywood annals. To educate today’s popcorn-chewers, Roach has to cover a lot of PBS-y ground, interpolating new footage with old newsreels of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Here are glimpses of Nixon, Reagan, and McCarthy — figures almost as dusty as Dalton Trumbo (1905–1976), whom his studio boss brands a “swimming-pool Soviet.”
Played by Bryan Cranston, Trumbo’s a proud, well-paid professional in 1947, raising children and horses on an idyllic farm far removed from the sordid politics of Hollywood or D.C. We know that can’t last. He stubbornly hews to principle — declaimed in tedious speeches, not recognizable prose — and refuses to answer HUAC’s questions, resulting in jail time and disgrace.
The rest of Trumbo is a more familiar comeback story, and it’s even less interesting than the first half. Cranston’s had better results playing flawed heroes (Walter White, LBJ, etc.), and the good parts here go to Helen Mirren — as anti-Commie gossip columnist Hedda Hopper — and Michael Stuhlbarg, as Trumbo’s weakly compliant pal Edward G. Robinson. (John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Otto Preminger also show up, though more stereotypically rendered.)
At every turn, Roach and his movie are gripped by a nostalgia for Old Hollywood and principled artists. This is the kind of handwringing drama where Trumbo’s loyal wife (Diane Lane) asks, “Where have all the liberals gone?” Where indeed.
Trumbo is more successful in depicting his cottage-industry hustle during the ’50s, when he used fake names to write two Oscar winners: the Peck/Hepburn trifle “Roman Holiday” and the forgettable bullfighting melodrama “The Brave One.” Gaming the Hollywood system is a lot more fun than standing up to the political system. Here Trumbo is abetted by John Goodman’s cheerfully uncouth indie producer, who reasons, “We bought a gorilla suit, and we gotta use it.”
Though there’s much to admire in the dull, dutiful “Trumbo,” there’s little to entertain. Ironically, this is exactly the kind of movie its hero was paid to punch up during the blacklist: It needs more gorilla suit.
“Trumbo”
Rating: R, for language and some sexual references.
Showing: Guild 45th, Pacific Place
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