Posted: 02/23/2004

Welcome to Mooseport

(2004)

by Clint Fletcher

As most of you know, the months of January, February and March are known as “dump months” for Hollywood films. Major studios take their time and strategically schedule their big-budget blockbusters for the Summer and their Oscar hopeful flicks for Christmas. So what does that leave us in between? Mooseport. God help us all…

Gene Hackman stars as Monroe, the ex President of the United States who decides to permanently move to his vacation spot, a mansion in a little town called Mooseport. His character’s most laughable quote in the film is “I had dignity once. Doesn’t anyone remember that?” And I say laughable because that quote pertains to Mr. Hackman’s real life acting career after watching this monstrosity of a film. Ray Romano is the town’s local plumber, Handy. Take note: Romano is funny on his sitcom, but not in this movie. So whoever was running for mayor dropped out and the locals ask Monroe to run as mayor of Mooseport. His advisors chuckle at this notion (as opposed to what the audience was doing), but he goes against their advice and decides to run. But there’s just one catch… for whatever reason, Handy wants to run as well. After Monroe talks Handy out of running, he immediately hits on his girlfriend Sally (a stunning Maura Tierney), which of course pisses Handy off, pushing him to drop back in the election. And the race is on! Too bad I missed most of it because I was too busy cleaning my ears out in disbelief of the dialogue I was hearing. Two thoughts popped into my mind in the middle of this movie… well… actually, many thoughts popped into my head but since there’s a limit on how much profanity I’m allowed to use, I ‘ll just stick with two. One: I wonder if Romano had to go through 6 months of intensive plumber training during pre-production. And two: after the writer of this movie tossed the script in the toilet and took a dump on it, was Romano capable of fishing it out on his own, or did he need professional plumbers to help him out?

Welcome to Mooseport is the worst film of 2004, and it will be tough for another film to remove it from that title over the next 10 months. Normally I would go into my 3 paragraphs about why the film is bad, but this one isn’t even worth it, and that is saying A LOT coming from a guy like me. What I don’t understand is how this project attracted such A-list talent. Academy Award winner Gene Hackman? Academy Award winner Marcia Gay Harden? They should’ve put these exact name-titles on the poster, then at least I could’ve laughed at that as I was leaving the theater to commit suicide. Sadly… the lake here in Chicago is a giant block of ice and I was unable to succeed. Hey, here’s a thought! Instead of dumping all the films that studios don’t have confidence in into three nice consecutive whole months, why not try and NOT MAKE THESE MOVIES AT ALL!!!

This film is like a bad cinematic disease that spreads like a rapid forest-fire. You know, the kind of movie you see where it affects you so much that when you watch something else with the same actors it STILL haunts you? I love Maura Tierney and I’m a big fan of ER. Now ER is ruined because of Mooseport, as well as the face of current Hollywood Cinema. And what rhymes with Hollywood Cinema? Hollywood Enema. If you’d like to experience the second part of that rhyme, check out Mooseport. I’ll see you at the bottom of the lake afterwards…

Clint Fletcher is a Chicago writer and filmmaker.

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