The Majestic [2002]

Drama, Romance

Carrey, Jim
Landau, Martin

Director

Frank Darabont

Like Frank Darabont's other movies, The Majestic attempts, and sometimes achieves, the sheer decency of classic American movies. A cross between The Music Man and The Return of Martin Guerre, it is the film about McCarthyism that Frank Capra might have made if he had not drifted to the populist Right. An amnesiac screen-writer (Jim Carrey) is mistaken for a missing war-hero and becomes the force that reinvigorates a town distraught over its dead young men. The film is so caught up in a pastel-coloured elegiac celebration of small-town life that it at times loses pace altogether and not even Jim Carrey can quite pull it back up to its natural speed. On the other hand, his underplaying of the climactic confrontation with the House Un-American Affairs Committee--his career is at risk because he once followed a girlfriend to a political meeting--is admirable; we believe in his conversion from cynicism to heroism because he is even quieter than Jimmy Stewart in Mister Smith Goes to Washington mode. Martin Landau is a little too lovable as the grieving father who persuades Carrey of his identity, Laurie Holden not quite convincing as the woman for whom he falls.

On the DVD: The Majestic on disc is presented in 1.85:1 visual aspect ratio with crisp, clear visuals that sometimes make us gasp at the complex realism of the period details and has an attractive Dolby 5.1 stereo acoustic. Extras include some deleted scenes, the trailer and an extended sequence from Sand Pirates of the Sahara, the witty B-movie pastiche that crops up at a couple of important moments in the plot. --Roz Kaveney