Timberlake lends flick a little pop
Pop star takes on the role of the crusading reporter
The festival closed with a debut — but was it a debut that blew?
As the party- pooped and movie- mad filed into Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday, they did so in order to see TIFF go out with a bang — and a Timberlake! The closing gala, a genre neo- noir called Edison, stars Kevin Spacey, Morgan Freeman and Dylan McDermott, among others, but it was pretty-boy star
Justin Timberlake who was both the biggest star and an even bigger curiosity.
Wearing white-as-white-canbe sneakers, an all-black ensemble worthy of Johnny Cash (sorry, wrong movie) and a tootoobig hat, he made the girls outside shriek like seagulls. Inside, where the crowd was older and more monied, the shrieking was at a minimum. Onstage, after being introduced at his movie’s world premiere, he played humble Joe, bowing ostentatiously when Freeman walked out to join him and the rest of the cast. So far, so not bad.
But then the lights went down, and the heads tilted upwards in unison, and what followed was a maiden cinema voyage that was just shy of Mickey Mouse … but just so. If the reaction from those around me in the theatre, and at the party afterwards, is any indication, Timberlake’s latest venture is not kicking as well as his ex Britney Spears’s new bundle of joy.
The David J. Burke- directed flick, which features the young pup as a newbie reporter taking on an entire unit of corrupt cops, wears clichés the way Larry King wears suspenders. It prompted more than a few nervous laughs around me. Like, for instance, when Timberlake barges into Freeman’s house and screams, all bloody-murder, “I’m a good writer!”
Set up as one of those crusadingjournalist films, the whole thing made me turn to comedy king Mark Breslin, who was sitting beside me, and yuk-yuk: “ It’s like All the President’s ’ NSync!”
At the closing- night bash, held at Harbourfront, I tried to gauge the crowd. The commentariat had plenty to say. “I really liked his V- necks,” one person told me, referring to the sweaters Timberlake wears throughout the movie, accessorized almost always with a reporter’s notebook. Another important somebody told me, “He did a good job of looking concerned. It was looking astonished that he really needs some help with.”
To be sure, someone at the top of the heap within the filmfest organization summed it up clearly when I’d asked about the movie the day before its premiere. “Let’s face it,” I was told. “ You’re looking at Justin’s milky skin more than you are at his acting.”
What the very recently Oscared Freeman is doing in this movie, however, I don’t know. Although he does do an admirable job of dancing by himself in his bathrobe in one scene — the most exhilarating and honest moment of the movie, to be sure.
As for Spacey, his toupée does most of the acting in the flick.
How troubled is this movie? Well, Timberlake’s name is Joshua Pollock — a moniker with arty aspirations that’s supposed to tell us he’s a free bird or something. And his girlfriend, the pretty Piper Perabo, is actually named Willow.
About the only thing positive some people could find to say? That, as a couple of people told me, “it was better than Jiminy Glick in Lala Wood” — a reference to last year’s wretched closing gala now famous for being one of the festival’s all-time low points.
When the movie ended at Roy Thomson and the lights came up on the very first people in the world to see Timberlake on the screen, there was an empty seat where Justin should have been. Even he couldn’t be bothered to stay for the movie.
P. S. On another note on the Timberlake front: A source tells me he stayed at the same suite at the same downtown hotel as Cameron Diaz — just not at the same time! Just hours after Cameron, in town for In Her Shoes, checked out, Justin moved in. Not sure if she left a note for him in the Bible in the drawer or not, but it does tell you something sad about how star-crossed most celebrity couples can be with their competing schedules, whirlwind travels, separate entourages, etc. Is it any wonder the Renées and Kennys of the world can’t make it work?