|
When did Robert De Niro stop acting? And when did he start saying yes to everything?
Granted, he's never terrible. In fact, that seems to be his biggest problem. He can show up, do his schtick (the squinting, the shrugging, the head bobbing from side to side), collect his check, and head home.
But when was the last time he surprised you? We don't mean surprised by his choice of role - as in, "De Niro's in Rocky & Bullwinkle !?!?!? Really!?!?!" - but surprised by what he did with the part.
Sam Rothstein in Casino was just an echo of Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas -- which was itself an echo of better work in Raging Bull and The Godfather Part II. Ditto for his parts in Cop Land, Heat, and Jackie Brown. He was intense as Dwight Hansen, the menacing stepdad in This Boy's Life, but hardly revelatory. How about Max Cady, the tattooed psycho in Cape Fear? Or maybe Stanley of Stanley & Iris?
Folks, those roles were more than ten years and twenty-five films ago. Yes, you read that right. Twenty-five films.
Or have you forgotten Backdraft, Sleepers, Night and the City, Mad Dog and Glory, Analyze This (and, while you're at it, That) Heat, The Fan, Great Expectations, Men of Honor, Meet the Parents, 15 Minutes --
15 Minutes (!?!) --
The Score, Ronin, Showtime --
Showtime (!!?!!)
City by the Sea, Godsend, and, finally, the just-opened Shark Tale.
Excuse us. We need to sit down and catch our breath.
It's some kind of testament to De Niro's -- what? Longevity? Reputation? Savvy? Greed? -- that he's managed to make more bad movies in the last decade than most actors have made movies, period. And we know what you're thinking: Those movies weren't terrible, with the exception of Showtime, 15 Minutes, and a few others. Meet the Parents? Funny. Heat? Thrilling-ish. Ronin? Downright serviceable.
Yes, sure, fine. We concede that. We like to see an urn full of someone's mom's ashes smashed in the fireplace and then sniffed at by a fuzzy cat as much as anyone.
But don't you remember when Robert De Niro showing up in a movie was an event? When it meant something? We're not even talking about his heyday as a live wire in the '70s, when he crackled with such committed intensity that he fried every other actor on the set. (Joe Pesci has a made a whole career out of the simple ability to appear onscreen with De Niro and not get sizzled to charcoal.)
We're talking about the 1980s. Hell, even the early '90s. We're talking about a time not that long ago. Back when you'd hear about a film like, say, The Untouchables, and think, "Hmmm." Then you'd hear De Niro was playing Capone -- and packing on the pounds and shaving back his hairline to do it -- and you'd think, "Hey! De Niro! Now that's the stamp of quality!"
Robert De Niro is no longer the stamp of quality.
There's something undeniably ironic about the fact that a generation's most famously committed actor -- the guy who got fat for Raging Bull, the guy who'd self-inflict any physical degradation in the name of his beloved Method -- should spend his retirement as, arguably, the laziest and most formulaic movie star in Hollywood. Hey, like we said off the top, De Niro does this because he can: he can be lazy and formulaic and schticky and tic-reliant because even that's still pretty damn fun to watch. (His only rival in this regard is the other famous super-thespian of his generation, Al Pacino. By contrast, John Travolta is lazy and formulaic and schticky and boring and entirely, incontestably, totally over, and sends us screaming in the opposite direction of any film that he's in, including Ladder 49, Audience 0.)
And we certainly understand that when you're in your fifties and sixties, you can't be expected to jet back and forth to Italy to pound back pasta and pack on forty pounds for every role. Nor to cover yourself in coiled muscle and tattoos and do prison-house pull-ups in order to play a stone psycho.
When you have a legacy like De Niro's -- arguably, the most impressive of any living film star, now that Brando's passed on to the great Island of Dr. Cuckoo in the sky -- sure, you can enrich your golden years with easy parts and easier paychecks. You can become the patron of a hip New York movie festival. Like any self-respecting grandpappy, you should be allowed to settle back in your rocking chair and rock yourself slowly unto death. And De Niro's been rocking slowly for over a decade now.
You can't begrudge the man his fame. You might begrudge his laziness just a little bit. But what we really want to say is this: when you start to make your living by parodying yourself, don't be surprised when you become a self-parody. We didn't flinch when De Niro mocked his own legacy in Analyze This, just because we didn't think he could send himself up in an even more embarrassing way - this, we thought, was as bad as it will get. Then came Rocky & Bullwinkle. And, now, Shark Tale. If you don't think you can sink any lower than sending yourself up in a movie with Billy Crystal, try sending yourself up in an animated movie. With Will Smith. And Katie Couric. Robert De Niro, you have become a cartoon.
|
