All About You

My thoughts on Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, The Fall Guy and The Idea of You

Throughout their astonishingly long-lasting reign as rock royalty, The Rolling Stones have seen any number of unique personalities come into their orbit, though few have been as fascinating and intriguing as Anita Pallenberg, the subject of Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill’s new documentary Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg. Born into the aristocracy and raised with a pronounced bohemian slant, she made her fateful entrance into pop culture history in 1965 when she met and fell in with the band in Munich, first enduring an abusive relationship with the late Brian Jones and then segueing into a longer, if often contentious, one with Keith Richards that would last through the end of the Seventies. Although she had here own accomplishments during this time—ranging from modeling to appearing in a number of films, most notably the cult classics Barbarella and Performance—it was her connection to the group that made her infamous and landed her in the headlines over the years for everything from myriad drug busts to the loss of one of her three children with Richards as an infant to the scandalous death of a young man who allegedly was playing Russian Roulette in her bed with one of Richards’ guns when the gun went off. After that incident, Richards parted ways ways her and as the group began to shed its more decadent trappings in the Eighties to become the kind of corporate entity that they once rebelled against, she found herself left behind to such a degree that one might be forgiven for thinking that she simply passed away at that time instead  of persevering, reinventing herself—returning to acting and returning to school to study fashion (while at the same time serving as a sort of style mentor to the likes of Kate Moss—and living to the ripe age of 75, passing away in 2017.

The purpose of the film is clearly to give Pallenberg her due as a person and not simply as an appendage to the Stones (although it cannot be mere coincidence that the film is hitting theaters just as the group itself is once again hitting the road)—in addition to the expected appearance of archival footage and talking head interviews (including comments from her kids, Moss, filmmaker Volker Schlondorff and even a few word from Richards), it uses excerpts from a recently discovered unpublished autobiography read by Scarlett Johansson as a sort of narrative spine. Although it is interesting to hear descriptions of some of these events in Pallenberg’s own words, the problem with the film is that it spends too much time rehashing old events that most anyone with any vague knowledge of Pallenberg and her years connected with the Rolling Stones (which will presumably make up the majority of the target audience) already know about. Meanwhile, the more potentially interesting stuff involving her emerging from her abyss of drugs and misadventure and becoming her own person—the very things that you would think that a film like this would want to focus on—is pretty much relegated to the last 15 minutes or so. For those with a fondness for the Rolling Stones and stories of wretched rock n roll excess, Catching Fire is serviceable enough, I suppose, but those going into it hoping for something more than that are likely to come out of it feeling not entirely satisfied.

As far as I can recall, I have never watched a single episode of the 1980s action series The Fall Guy—what little interest I maintained in the thespic stylings of Lee Majors had almost entirely dissipated with the cancelation of The Six-Million-Dollar Man—and I have never felt a moment of regret over its absence from my life. That said, I cannot imagine that even the dumbest episodes from its five-year run could have come close to equating the bottomless stupidity and endless vapidity of the new big-screen incarnation that has arrived at multiplexes to get the summer movie derby off to a resounding stop. After disappearing from the industry following being seriously injured in a fall gone awry on a set 18 months earlier, one-time ace stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) has been summoned to the Australian set of MetalStorm, the bloated sci-fi epic that is marking the directorial debut of former flame Jody (Emily Blunt), though when he arrives, she has no idea of why he is there and is none too thrilled to see him again. His arrival is the work of her over-caffeinated producer (Hannah Waddingham, definitely putting the emphasis on “ham” with her excruciating performance), who has brought him in to track down the film’s supremely obnoxious and now-missing lead actor, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), before his absence is discovered and the production is shut down. This, of course, leads to an endless array of fistfights, chases, shootouts and explosions—not all of them confined to the set—as Colt bumbles around trying to save the day for his one-time love.

Many have positive that this film is essentially an extended commercial for the campaign to get the efforts of stunt teams officially recognized with their own Oscar category. Clearly, these people are more than deserving of such awards—with their work having been previously celebrated in such films as Hooper, Once Upon a Time. . .in Hollywood and any number of documentaries—but they certainly are not deserving of having their case made by something this crappy. Director David Leitch got his start as a stunt guy but whatever his prowess in that field, it has not translated to filmmaking—outside of co-directing John Wick, his subsequent projects (including Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train) have all been bloated smugfests and The Fall Guy might be the most irritating of the lot. Although the stunts on display are themselves reasonably impressive, they cannot begin to compensate for the overproduced and underthought nonsense surrounding them—this is the kind of film that has enough money behind it to afford a needle drop of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” but not enough common sense to come up with anything genuinely funny or exciting at any point in the proceedings. (Ironically, the only bit in the film that actually made me laugh briefly is one that any one in the audience could pull off on their own without the aid of a single stunt person.) The only times when the film threatens to come to life is when it gets around to exploiting the considerable star charisma of the two leads but it even figures out how to nip that in the bud by keeping them separated for far too long. Vapid, tedious and far too “clever” for its own good, The Fall Guy is such an annoyance throughout that I can confidently state that you could stay at home, pop on the blu-ray of the actual 1983 cut-rate 3D epic Metalstorm (Sorry, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Sun) and have a better time—sure, you won’t get the 3D effects but even so, it is nowhere near as flat as this mess.

As The Idea of You opens, LA art gallery owner Solene (Anne Hathaway) is still reeling from her recent divorce and facing her imminent 40th birthday when she is pressed into service chaperoning teen daughter Izzy (Ella Rubin) and her friends to Coachella, where her overcompensating ex (Reid Scott) has purchased them a lavish package including a meet-and-greet with August Moon, a boy band sensation that was Izzy’s favorite group a few years ago. While the others are gallivanting around, she ends up meeting cute with Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine), the group’s 24-year-old lead singer, who is immediately intrigued by her, even going so far as to first serenade her from the concert stage and then turning up after the festival at her gallery. At first, Solene is somewhat resistant to his wooing due to the age difference between them, but when it is time for Izzy to go off to summer camp, she finally breaks down and, after a romantic night in a New York hotel, winds up accompanying him on the European leg of his tour. Alas, what initially seems like a heedless romantic fantasy begins to hit such inescapable obstacles as the incessant presence of paparazzi, the critiques of their relationship coming from everyone from his fan base to her ex and her own issues with dating someone 16 years her junior and the point comes when she seems resigned to calling an end to the whole relationship before ever really giving it a chance to flourish.

Based on the novel by Robinne Lee (itself reportedly inspired by fan fiction involving real-life pop heartthrob Harry Styles), The Idea of You is simultaneously trying to be the cinematic equivalent of a frothy beach read and a serious contemplation on everything from romantic relationships that dare to stray outside accepted norms to the increasingly cruel and corrosive nature of online culture. Either one of these approaches might have made for an interesting film but in trying to combine them together, director Michael Showalter (whose previous films include the hilarious rom-com skewering They Came Together and the thematically similar Hello, My Name is Doris) and co-writer Jennifer Westfield struggle to find the right tone at times and seem oddly convinced that the very nature of an older woman-younger man relationship is still inherently taboo these days without wrestling with the inherent issues of what that might still be—of course, some of the potentially transgressive nature of the relationship is undercut by the fact that Hathaway hardly appears to have aged a day in the 25 years since she first burst upon the film scene in The Princess Diaries. However, if you can get past the notion of her appearing in a story involving a relationship in which she portrays “the older woman” (and that may well be a stretch for some viewers), Hathaway is by far the best thing here—she is charming and charismatic as always but when the film tries to chart more dramatic waters, it seems clear that she has given more thought to the issues that it tries to grapple with involving fame, romance and the roles that society expects women of a certain age to fulfill (not to mention the castigation face by those who don’t) than the screenplay itself has done. Ultimately, The Idea of You is not much more than a barely-passable riff on the likes of Notting Hill but in her best moments, Hathaway allows you to get a feel of the potentially more troubling (and potentially more rewarding) work that it might have been with the aid of a tighter and smarter screenplay.