The Van Wetter plotline is ancillary, for better or worse. There really is no whodunit mystery, more of a focus on the relationship between Charlotte and Jack. With the costumes, makeup, cars, and the various camera angles, the film has a look that feels like authentic 1960s Florida. Its politically incorrectness is refreshing and enlightening, while it deals with race relations, much moreso than its Help counterpart. This isn't no feel-good movie for white people, moreso a film about a bunch of adults who are fucked-up hot messes dealing with their own shit. Every character has their own agenda or skeletons in their closet, and when they all start to fall out at once and barrage the audience, the movie begins to get scattered and lose its juice. Rightly or wrongly so, the plot skims over certain elements rather hastily as it races for the finish line (and what a closing shot).
The casting of Cusack is smart in that he has an innocent enough face that you believe he may have not done it, but the actor plays him with an edge that keeps you wondering, which is important to egg the audience along, as it's ultimately insignificant. My only beef, however, is that Cusack doesn't quite have the sex appeal for Van Wetter, even though Kidman is such a good actress, she could you have convinced she wanted to hump a tree. She's brimming over in heat. Her accent is a little strange at first (as many like to point out with her American dialects), as if she is talking out of the lower part of her mouth (insert Third Lip joke here). But, she commits to the role, as you expect from Kidman and she goes the whole nine yards. So, it leaves me wondering if the story was pared down unnecessarily and inadvertently neutered her emotional attachment to Jack, because I wasn't feeling it. The transition from her sexual attraction to Hillary to developing a fondness for Jack just isn't there. She's all dark with little vulnerability (except in one scene towards the end between her and Cusack). And it's imperative that you feel connected to her as a viewer, because the film relies on Zac Efron's shoulders as the film presses on. He's believable as the young innocent with no purpose in life other than to be in love with an older vamp who has him under his spell. But, his journey feels shallow and meaningless, as most everyone around him betrays him and his love for Charlotte is all that he has to hold onto.
I wouldn't expect too much, but I recommend it to those who trust my judgment in taste, as, essentially, it's imperfect, and quite likely that you will indeed love or hate it. Deeply flawed, I still give it a "B" for Daniels' somewhat audacious and pulpy style: worth one viewing.
The film starts out with someone interviewing Anita Chester (Macy Gray) about the murder of white racist Sheriff Thurmond Call (Danny Hanemann) during the 1960s (perhaps hastily added in post). She was the nanny/maid for the Jansen household, headed by W.W. (Scott Glenn), who is married to his second wife Ellen Guthrie (Nealla Gordon), stepmom to grown sons Jack (Zac Efron) and Ward (Matthew McConaughey). W.W. Jansen owns a Floridian newspaper. Son Ward is a reporter and Jack is The Paperboy. Anita is primarily the mother-figure and has a close and easy relationship to the boys.
The movie proper starts with Anita making light of Jack's privacy as they kid around with each other. In his office, W.W. and Ellen, who works for him as a reporter, watch Shirley Chisholm speak on television and Ellen reveals herself to be not so forward-thinking. She is exceptionally critical of Chisholm. W.W. is aware that son Ward is coming to town with his partner Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo) to investigate the murder conviction of Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack). At the apartment of Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), she discusses her new prison lover Hillary with her housemates while The Edge of Night plays on television. Ward arrives with Yardley in a town that isn't the most welcoming to their cause. (Yardley is a black man sporting a London accent, which will be important later.) Jack picks them up and takes them to the Jansen household. At an awkward dinner, Ellen is kind of a cunt and dodges questions about how she got from New York to small-town Florida. The Jansen couple are surprised to learn that the Yardley is an actual writer. Yardley believes Hillary is guilty ("It was a lynching, pure and simple"), but Ward believes "he has certain rights ... that the process disregarded."
The next day, Ward and Yardley prepare their case in the garage. The trampy Charlotte arrives with a box full of correspondence and Jack is immediately enamored with her.
Jack drives Charlotte to the prison where her fiancee Hillary is located, and he shares the story of how he got kicked off his college swim team. She starts to get horny thinking about Hillary and has a moment in front of Jack, before a guard kicks them off the premises. Over narration, Anita explains Hillary's conviction as being pretty hallow. Ward and company visit Weldon Pine, Hillary's attorney on the case. The meeting gets tempestuous, to say the least.
There's a palpable sexual tension between Charlotte and Hillary and the convict asks her to spread her legs, rip off her panties, open her mouth seductively, and masturbate (the latter of which we don't actually see). You'd think he was saving up for his spank bank, but being a prisoner and all, he cums in his pants. A guard ends the telepathically-conjugal visit. Ward and Jack visit Weldon Pine (Gary Clarke) about missing evidence. He shares that Hillary once cut a deputy's thumb off over a traffic ticket. "You can't do much without your thumb; it's what separates us from the primates. A little thing like holding your wife's titty ..." and indicates a masturbation joke. On the second visit to the jailhouse, Hillary is irate that Charlotte wore pants. "Every God-damn man in here wears pants. How am I supposed to tell you apart from them?" He points out Ward's scar and shits on Yardley. A non-plussed Yardley asks Charlotte, "Where does one gets pants like that from anyway?" Anita narrates that Jack becomes jealous of Charlotte's obsession with Hillary; she also mentions that Jack starts to wonder about his brother's relationship to Yardley.
At the beach, Jack reads Lolita while Charlotte suntans. She tells the infatuated Jack, "I'm not going to blow a friendship over a stupid little blow job." When she points out some girls nearby she thinks would be interested in servicing Jack, he squashes her suggestion. She responds, "Well, it's a good thing you're not in prison, because you wouldn't have a choice there." Angry, he tells her to fuck off and swims out into the ocean. After getting massively attacked by a bunch of jellyfish, he barely swims back ashore, where some strangers agonize overly the badly hurt Jack. Charlotte barges in, "Hey, did you say you're going to piss on him? What are you doing to him? ... shut the fuck up! Get the fuck out of here! I can see this ... I will slap your face, get the fuck out of here ... I said I will kick your ass. Move it! IF ANYONE'S GONNA PISS ON HIM IT'S GONNA BE ME! He don't like strangers peeing on him. Come on, come on." In the much talked about and spoiled moment, Charlotte urinates on Jack (it what could have and probably was simulated and involved a body double). "Come on," Charlotte encourages herself to get a steady stream out. Later, while Anita tends to him in his bedroom, Jack comments on the smell around him. She replies, "That's because that blonde lady peed all over your face." The incident makes W.W.'s newspaper, which infuriates son Jack, who picks a fight with Yardley and calls him "nigger" in front of Anita. Charlotte's solution: "He needs to get laid ... he's sexually repressed." Yardley, "'Sexually repressed' says a forty-year-old woman who is obsessed with prison cock." Charlotte rather nonchalantly responds, "That's not nice."
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