Really, You Shouldn't Have
The Ultimate Gift / John Williams
Reviewing Mark Helprin’s novel Winter’s Tale for the New York Times Book Review in 1983, Benjamin DeMott wrote, “I find myself nervous, to a degree I don’t recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance.”
Assigned to review The Ultimate Gift, I find myself facing the opposite problem. There is no way that mere words on a page (or screen) could properly describe the experience of sitting through this movie — the spiritless acting, the hackneyed script, the unrelenting barrage of insults to one’s intelligence. No, it’s something you could only fully absorb by experiencing it firsthand, but I don’t recommend that. It’s difficult to imagine a worse movie being released this year, and that judgment comes from someone who held his nose and scarfed down Wild Hogs last week.
We start at the rain-drenched funeral of the mega-rich Red Stevens (James Garner), an event noisily crashed by his grandson, Jason Stevens (Drew Fuller), who shows up mid-ceremony in a vintage car without a muffler. As he emerges from his ride and walks toward the gravesite contorting his boyish features into a disaffected sneer, it’s clear that Jared Leto, Carson Daly, and the lead singer of Maroon 5 weren’t available for the role, so we’re stuck with Fuller.
The next day, the family gathers in a conference room to hear the results of Red’s will. One by one, in a scene that would stand out as awful in even the most abysmal made-for-TV movie, they’re told by Red’s trusted lawyer, Mr. Hamilton (Bill Cobbs) that the deceased billionaire didn’t love, trust, or respect them enough to leave them anything. (They’re already stinking rich, but they want more.)
When they’ve all stormed out, only Jason remains, convinced that the old man has spurned him, too. But he learns, from a videotape that Red left behind, that he’s been bequeathed a series of gifts that will lead to the “ultimate gift.” The first step involves a trip to Houston, and Jason is hesitant to leave behind the life he has — including a giant loft with amazing views, a beautiful and shallow blonde girlfriend, and an utter lack of industry — to jump through his grandfather’s hoops. These opening scenes are so broadly drawn, with Jason making today’s gossip-rag heiresses look like grateful, grounded people, that whatever lessons he eventually learns are rendered unbelievable and meaningless.
His path through those lessons in a nutshell: He ends up going to Texas, for no convincing reason, where Gus (Brian Dennehy) teaches him the value of work by making him plant fence posts for a month. He returns home to find all of his material possessions gone, his limitless credit cards discontinued. He meets a girl named Emily (Abigail Breslin) and her mother, Alexia (Ali Hillis), in a park while he’s essentially homeless. He eventually learns Emily has leukemia. He goes to Ecuador, in the movie’s most ridiculous scenes (against stiff competition), to learn the real details of how his father died many years before. While there, he and a villager are kidnapped by drug runners and thrown into small cells long enough for the baby-faced Jason to grow a riotously unrealistic desert-island beard. He gets back home, devotes himself to Alexia, and eventually receives the financial windfall that Red intended him to have once his heart thawed. (Spoiler, but I think you’ll have guessed: Emily kicks it.) Jason uses his money to open a hospital for children, at which point he gets even more money in the form of full control of Red’s $2 billion estate.
It never really gets around to explicitly saying it, which is somewhat miraculous, but I think the point of The Ultimate Gift is that Jesus wants us to befriend sick children, sleep on park benches, and give away our money. And I’ll be damned if that doesn’t sound a lot like what Jesus would want. But there has to be a more dignified way to spread that gospel.
The Ultimate Gift is a Hallmark card adapted by Mitch Albom into a song that’s belted out by Celine Dion right after she watches a puppy get flattened by an ice cream truck. It’s emotionally fake, stylistically amateurish, and intellectually starved. If you cry toward the end of it — and you might — they will be the most undeserved tears you ever shed. The one time I felt myself welling up, I willed the water back into its ducts. By that point, the movie had firmly established itself as my enemy, and I wasn’t going to allow it even the smallest moral victory.
John Williams lives in Brooklyn. He’s an editor at Harper Perennial and a freelance writer. He blogs at A Special Way of Being Afraid.
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Comments
"The Ultimate Gift is a Hallmark card adapted by Mitch Albom into a song that's belted out by Celine Dion right after she watches a puppy get flattened by an ice cream truck."
I think that might be my favourite description of anything I've read so far here on Pajiba. It got me to de-lurk-ify.
Posted by: dsbs at March 11, 2007 6:47 PM
"By that point, the movie had firmly established itself as my enemy, and I wasn't going to allow it even the smallest moral victory."
Well said. There was a review on here (and I don't know if you wrote it), talking about the 'dying child' as an immediate rig to schlock-induced tears. My god, I think it was for "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants", which I found myself crying through as well. I'm glad you were able to withstand this one.
Posted by: Lauren at March 11, 2007 8:42 PM
Well, dsbs and Lauren did all the work for me, but I was signing in just to say that your last paragraph was a tour de force.
And also -
"When they've all stormed out, only Jason remains, convinced that the old man has spurned him, too. But he learns, from a videotape that Red left behind, that he's been bequeathed..."
Somewhere the old WKRP writers are rolling their eyes.
Posted by: ranylt at March 11, 2007 10:21 PM
OK, I'm sorry you had to watch yet another sucky movie, but I must say: I'm glad I'm not the only one who sometimes finds herself on the verge of crying when she knows damn well a movie doesn't deserve her tears.
Posted by: magic8ball at March 11, 2007 11:22 PM
Hahaha, this is my favourite sentence:
As he emerges from his ride and walks toward the grave site contorting his boyish features into a disaffected sneer, it's clear that Jared Leto, Carson Daly, and the lead singer of Maroon 5 weren't available for the role, so we're stuck with Fuller.
I certainly got a sense of the movie's awfulness with this, John.
Posted by: MJ at March 12, 2007 7:16 AM
Yeah films like these with tear-milker scenes... The sentiment-thomping violin overload soundtrack is usually the bastard that gets to me, even when nothing tragic's happening.
Posted by: Sunsneezer at March 12, 2007 8:05 AM
Screw the movie itself, that still up there is giving the creep-outs. Seriously. Get your mitts off the cancer-kid, MJ.
Looked god-awful from the previews, thank you for acerbically confirming my suspicions.
Posted by: Malice Alice at March 12, 2007 8:35 AM
What's creepy to me is how the photo accompanying this review makes it seem like that dude is about to get sexy with the cancer kid.
Posted by: chriso at March 12, 2007 2:22 PM
"Reviewing Mark Helprin's novel Winter's Tale for the New York Times Book Review in 1983, Benjamin DeMott wrote, "I find myself nervous, to a degree I don't recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance."
Assigned to review The Ultimate Gift, I find myself facing the opposite problem. There is no way that mere words on a page (or screen) could properly describe the experience of sitting through this movie -- the spiritless acting, the hackneyed script, the unrelenting barrage of insults to one's intelligence."
Amazing. I love seeing true brilliance juxtaposed against true shittiness.
Posted by: Samantha T at March 12, 2007 2:47 PM
This is obviously a fake movie. You must have found a script fallen out of dumpster somewhere and had a bad dream afterwards.
However well put your puns and witty comments, please stick to reviewing real movies in the future.
Danke Schön.
Posted by: Jeff K at March 12, 2007 4:16 PM
I can't tell from the picture, but is Abigail Breslin younger in this than in Little Miss Sunshine?
Is it possible that the movie would have gone straight to video (a real-time review anyone?) were it not for the success of Sunshine?
Just a crackpot theory that is not supported by the order of movie listings on imdb or the voices in my head.
Posted by: anikitty at March 12, 2007 4:53 PM
I don't know how you managed to say a kind word about Jesus when the craptacularity of the movie was so overwhelming...but you did. Thank you. I admire your willpower. And if you saved just one person from going to see this schlock...bless you, my son.
Posted by: Louise at March 13, 2007 2:08 AM
I thought the same thing anikitty. She looks a lot younger in this film to me, and I'm pretty sure that the only reason it was released to theaters was just to capitalize on Little Miss Sunshine.
Posted by: Mimi at March 13, 2007 2:37 AM
So, anikitty and Mimi, would this be Abigail Breslin's Norbit?
Posted by: Vermillion at March 13, 2007 10:51 AM
Good point, Vermillion; I'm tempted to say "yes," but she wore the fat suit in Little Miss Sunshine. Dilemmas...dilemmas...
Posted by: anikitty at March 13, 2007 11:26 AM
"What's creepy to me is how the photo accompanying this review makes it seem like that dude is about to get sexy with the cancer kid."
- I thought the exact same thing!
"The Ultimate Gift is a Hallmark card adapted by Mitch Albom into a song that's belted out by Celine Dion right after she watches a puppy get flattened by an ice cream truck."
- That line had me braying laughter so hard, I think I may have ruptured something.
Posted by: rose no thorns at March 13, 2007 5:07 PM
How many times and in response to how many reviews can one person say, "BEST REVIEW EVER"?
It would be nice if you wouldn't continually top yourselves. I mean, fucking seriously.
Posted by: juliagulia at March 14, 2007 6:03 PM
Awesome review of a movie I've never heard of.
I just have to say, Winter's Tale was a great book. (Or at least it was when I was a teenager. I'm a little hesitant to go back and read it again, for fear the reality won't equal my memories.)
Posted by: Todd at September 6, 2007 5:07 PM
