CINEMA: Diminshed Capacity

There haven’t been many comedies so far about Alzheimer’s and on the evidence of this film, there probably won’t be that many in the future.

Suffering from the early onset of dementia is Rollie (Alan Alda), uncle of Cooper (Matthew Broderick), a man who is himself dealing with brain troubles after an accident. When Coop discovers Uncle Rollie has taken to hooking his typewriter up to a fishing line in a lake so the fish can write poetry, he decides it’s time to visit, which sets off a chain of incidents and coincidences that will see Rollie, Coop and Coop’s old flame Charlotte (Virginia Madsen) heading to a baseball memorabilia convention so Rollie can sell his treasured (and very rare) Chicago Cubs baseball card.

If the plot sounds all over the place then you should see the film. It’s not that the acting is hammy, it’s just everything stays really one dimensional and static—as if the film never really jumps into life. One of the main problems is an almost total lack of sympathy for Rollie’s plight. That’s not because Alda plays him as nasty or dislikeable, it’s just you never feel you’ve really got to know him at all. What you are left with is a bunch of characters in a certain situation you don’t really care about one way or another – there’s no heart and without that the film remains lifeless.      Dee Pilgrim