Movie Review: Colour Me Kubrick

There are movies about real people. And there are movies about the movies. And now there is a movie about a real person who loved the movies so much that he impersonated a real person who made movies -- but of course, in the end, it's all a movie. Right?

During the 1990s, Stanley Kubrick was embroiled in the production of his notoriously troubled final film, Eyes Wide Shut. But the stress of script changes, recasting, and multiple reshoots would have been small potatoes had Kubrick known what was going on outside his notoriously secretive shoots: namely, that a middle-aged homosexual named Alan Conway was impersonating Kubrick around London in order to get free drinks and sexual favors from the populace's more star-struck denizens. The fact that Conway looked and sounded nothing like Kubrick (who was himself a married, straight man from Brooklyn) was rarely enough to raise suspicion that this man was not the director of such classics as A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, and others.

The story alone is a fantastic hook -- and unfortunately, the filmmakers apparently felt that it alone would make for a cohesive, thrilling experience. Instead, we see glimpses of Conway's tale tumble out in a clumsy series of seemingly disconnected scenes staged more for camp value than anything else.

John Malkovich is wonderfully unhinged (perhaps a bit too much so -- although this guy really did seem like he was bonkers) as the mincing, alcoholic con man, and his attempts at imitating the reclusive director at various stages of inebriation are the real highlights of the film. I haven't heard accents this scattered and riotously bad since ... well, since Blood Diamond -- but here it's at least entirely intentional.

Malkovich's crazy old queen would be nicely balanced by a foil, or even a more normal or accessible counterpart. But the few characters thrown into the mix who suspect his deception (including an aspiring gay fashion designer, Richard E. Grant as a restaurateur, and a reformed rent boy) are given a few scenes and then disappear. After a series of meandering story threads that seem more intent on mimicking the work of the actual Kubrick than moving the story (the music from his classics is used to the extent that it overwhelms the dialog in some scenes), we spend a third of the film watching Conway dupe low-end television entertainer Lee Pratt (Jim Davidson), who believes that Kubrick can get him booked in Vegas.

It's perhaps a reasonable approach for director Brian Cook (who actually worked on several Kubrick productions) to side with Conway and see the world through his pathological, disjointed, in-the-moment lens. But it's not entirely satisfying to watch. Sure, some of the scenes are riotously funny, but in the end it's just a trifle -- a strung-together series of skits based around Malkovich's fantastically weird characterization of this loon.

It would be easy to get offended by the parade of negative gay stereotypes that course throughout the film, but in the end it's all such a farce -- and such a stylized one -- that it's hard to take any of it seriously. There are more sympathetic gay characters to balance out Conway's predatory queer, even if they wind up getting taken for a ride because of their own selfish career aspirations. And overall it's really one of the campiest, gayest movies to get released this year -- garish (and Kubrickian) characterizations and negative stereotyping aside.

In the end, Kubrick is an entertaining glance at a hilariously unimaginable true story -- but just a glance. Rooted by Malkovich's gonzo performance, the film offers a handful of hilarious moments but doesn't attempt to do more than scratch the surface of the story. if you're a fan of high camp, Kubrick, or Malkovich, you'll find something to like in this strange little film. Otherwise, Colour Me Mildly Amused.