From 'The Sixth Sense' to nonsense
CNN Reviewer
(CNN) -- The only reason Kevin Costner doesn't say "I see dead people" in his new movie, "Dragonfly," is because a solitary spirit is calling him from the Great Beyond -- the plural wouldn't fit. Otherwise, he might as well have had Bruce Willis leading him around by the hand.
Director Tom Shadyac, who's also responsible for such efforts as "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" (1994) and "Patch Adams" (1998), is obviously trying to duplicate the unnerving tone of M. Night Shyamalan's brilliant 1999 feature, "The Sixth Sense."
But Shyamalan is a virtuoso whose films are idiosyncratic symphonies of spiritual loss and rediscovery. Shadyac, on the other hand, sometimes points his camera at Jim Carrey, so he gets to make more movies. One of these things, to say the least, is not like the other.
Shyamalan's low-key power is unique in modern commercial filmmaking, so it's not really Shadyac's fault that he can't reproduce it. He should, however, have recognized that you need to do more than lap-dissolve between slow-moving premonitions to put viewers on the edges of their seats.
Bugged by loss
Costner plays Joe Darrow, head of the emergency room at Chicago Memorial Hospital. In a quick prologue, we see what leads to the funk that will overwhelm Joe for the rest of the picture. During a mission of mercy in the jungles of Venezuela, his doctor wife, Emily (Susanna Thompson), is killed while riding a bus that's caught in a mudslide.
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Joe simply can't deal with the loss of his soul mate, and he feels guilty for not joining her on the trip. He starts brooding, getting testy with patients, and working grueling 20-hour shifts at the hospital instead of actually grieving. But that's just the beginning of his descent into possible madness.
Emily had a birthmark on her back that resembled a dragonfly, and she used to collect dragonfly knickknacks. Soon, Joe thinks she's trying to reach him, as dragonflies appear at the window and a paperweight containing one of the bugs seems to roll around the house at will. Big Bird, the family's macaw, also freaks out and blurts a salutation that he only delivers when Emily enters the room. (This scene would have been a lot creepier if Costner didn't yell "Big Bird! Big Bird! Big Bird!" while the macaw flaps wildly around the kitchen.)
Joe's supportive next-door neighbor, Miriam (Kathy Bates in an empty role), is convinced that her friend is going nuts. Meanwhile, Joe, who's been forced to take a vacation, has been visiting Emily's former pediatric oncology patients at the hospital. The ones who've had near-death experiences keep drawing a symbol that looks like "a squiggly cross," and they make cryptic references to Emily appearing to them "inside a rainbow."
Could Emily, even though she's dead as a doornail, be trying to tell Joe something? Could Costner at least try to act like he cares? Could this movie be any more dull and repetitive?
A squiggly cross to bear
Joe is supposed to be going through a sea change in his consciousness while he pursues the supernatural clues piling up around him. But Costner's warm-milk persona is just as ill-fitting as Shadyac's perfunctory directing chops, and some of the more overtly silly dialogue would sink Laurence Olivier.
Moreover, that endlessly re-detected squiggly cross -- instead of adding an air of mystery to the story the way the imaginative mountain visions do in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" -- just irritates after a while. You may not know exactly what it is, but you have a damned good idea where it ultimately will lead Joe. Once he gets there, the payoff isn't likely to floor anybody.
This kind of inoffensive, do-nothing movie featuring a name actor only points up some people's misunderstanding of the creative process. Shadyac may be a perfectly competent manager of inane comedies. And Costner is still a recognizable face, if not a box-office champ. But films that are meant to accomplish more than a poke in the ribs or pop in the head require committed, individual perspectives if they're to have any chance of working.
"Dragonfly" fails because it was pretty much destined to fail, given the inappropriate, mismatched talent that created it. You don't need help from dead people -- or from a much better movie -- to see that.
The scariest thing about "Dragonfly" is Linda Hunt playing a nun for one scene. You might want to bring a magazine.
