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Louis

Film Rundown:

Genre:

Silent

Parental Rating:

NC-17

Director:

Dan Pritzker

Starring:

Jackie Earle Haley, Anthony Coleman, Shanti Lowry

Runtime:

Our rating:

C-

by The Ology Team .

On Aug 25, 2010

Louis Review

However uneven the end result, you have to hand it to director Dan Pritzker and co-writers David Rothschild and Derick and Steven Martini for even attempting to revive the silent genre with Louis, a fanciful, often deliriously goofy ode to the Chaplin/Keaton era. Imagine if Baz Luhrmann decided to remake The Little Rascals (but actually utilized some restraint along the way) and you’ll have an inkling of this film's style and an approximation of this feature--which given its 70-minute length, might have made an even more desirable, compact short film.

Musician Louis Armstrong (Anthony Coleman) explores the wonderful world of turn-of-the-century New Orleans, where he comes across a popular bordello inhabited by Grace (Shanti Lowry), the most prized of the town’s ladies of the night. Nobody lusts for her more than crooked politician Judge Perry (Jackie Earle Haley)—until he discovers that he’s her newborn daughter’s baby-daddy and attempts to erase any ties to the duo in his ruthless bid for governor. Louis observes all the hurt and scandal—when all he wants to do is blow on his prized trumpet and make beautiful music.

You definitely can expect beautiful music here. The film’s rich Wynton Marsalis jazz score, played by a 10-piece band is brilliant and can be heard live in the handful of cities that will present the movie with accompaniment. However, Louis as a movie doesn't quite warrant such an elaborate presentation; one can imagine people's attention easily wandering away from the film and onto the musicians. Monotony settles in sooner than expected, and it lacks the texture of the silent films it's aping. But lenser Vilmos Zsigmond (who also makes a cameo) unearths all the tapestry-like quality imaginable from the proceedings. It may be shot on old-fashioned soundstages (it’s all quite reminiscent of Janet Jackson's music videos of 20 years ago-the Cab Calloway throwback "Alright" springs right to mind), but Louis looks as vital as anything else.

And any movie that allows the great Jackie Earle Haley to cut loose in this manner is absolutely worth a peek. His haunted screen presence proves thrillingly adept at physical comedy, and witnessing his priceless double-takes and expertly engineered goon prowess is a lesson in fine comic acting. He even gets his own version of the famous Chaplin sequence from Modern Times in which the Tramp is caught inside a machine—and while this reviewer is no fan of constant remakes, a possible re-do of Chaplin certainly entered my consciousness every time Haley took a (silent) breath.

Sum...ology: Louis doesn't wail, but it won't give you the blues either.