Hit me, baby, one more time
Film a bit heavy on the themes, but still decent and human
Danny Collins is the kind of movie that isn’t content just to name the aging rock star’s estranged granddaughter Hope — it has him ruefully say, “Goodbye, Hope” multiple times.
It’s the kind of movie that puts a letter from John Lennon in a pretty frame — and then shows it cracked and covered in cocaine when it wants to show that Danny has betrayed its intent.
But somewhere amid the heavy-handedness, Danny Collins manages to be a decent and very human little movie, one that captures the joys of the more humdrum life for which Danny (Al Pacino) so clearly yearns.
A Neil Diamond-esque rock star who started off as a Bob Dylan-esque one, Danny begins the movie — after a flashback interview with an insufferable rock journalist to whom he expresses nervousness about being famous — in a haze of coke and brown liquor, belting out cheery shtick for the benefit of grey hairs in the front row.
The massive mansion and the young trophy wife do as good a job of easing his guilt as the drugs, but they’re all thrown into sharp relief when his manager/ best friend Frank (Christopher Plummer) presents him with that letter from Lennon, a lostfor-40-years missive about how he doesn’t have to be scared of fame as long as he stays true to himself.
The casual back-and-forth quips of Danny and Frank’s relationship turn out to be the movie’s main strength, and might actually be the only thing allowed to function as subtext.
If Danny is a hack on stage, when he actually sits down to talk to people, he’s a charming if wounded sort. And almost every scene that features Pacino being charming and wounded with another of his talented, more subdued acting partners makes both movie and character come a little more alive.
In an effort to get back in touch with himself, Danny rents a hotel room near the New Jersey turnpike. The son he’s never met (Bobby Cannavale) lives nearby with his wife (Jennifer Garner) and Hope. Danny hopes trying to be the father he never was to his son might kickstart his old songwriting magic.
The story plays out with a mawkish familiarity. His son initially doesn’t want anything to do with him and is gradually won over by — well, Danny’s money, basically, which gets Hope into a private school. In yet another thematic drubbing, Danny at some point says you can’t buy redemption. But as much as the movie tries to depict his generosity as a more humane, personal gesture, it plays out an awful lot like buying redemption. The underlying message seems to be get rich and you can afford decency and morals down the road.
But just as the father-son relationship warms up, we learn the son has a rare form of leukemia — another opportunity for bought redemption and another brick gone from the wall of fame Danny lives behind.
In between plot points there is a lot of fun talk and banter. His flirtation with the hotel manager (Annette Bening) borders on the too-cute — they constantly talk about how good their banter is, because, of course, it needs to be pointed out.
But in scenes where his daughter-in-law gives him a nervous dressing-down or his son bats his own feelings back and forth, the film gets close to conveying honest emotion that is both grounding and cleverly delivered.
If Danny Collins, the film, focused more on getting down to earth and less on ham-handedly reminding us that’s what it is trying to do, that would be something to sing about.