Verdict
Summary
Overall, the film is very earnest and Nolte leads a strong ensemble, and co-writer / director John Hancock never quite gives his movie a clear conviction from which to base the film. It’s worth watching, though, and while it’s dated and a little wonky, it might still work for fans of its great cast alone.
Plot:
A man serving a life sentence is released on parole after he writes a play that takes the world by storm.
Review:
Looking out from his cell from a maximum-security prison, Lee Umstetter (Nick Nolte) makes a very conscious decision to completely change his going-nowhere life. He reads a book for the first time, starting with War and Peace, and then over the course of a year or two he reads all the classics from his cell, expanding his mind and consciousness. It’s like he learns how to walk on the moon from hell, and not long after that he begins putting pen to paper and writes a play called “Weeds.” His cellmate Claude (Lane Smith) is perplexed by Lee’s awakening, but he’s along for the ride. Lee, a model prisoner, gets the approval of the warden to put on his play in front of the entire prison’s willing audience, and then he goes into the casting phase of the process, casting fellow inmates to fill all the roles, and much to his own surprise Lee casts his enemy Bagdad (Ernie Hudson) because the guy is perfect for the role. Filling out supporting roles are other prisoners, including the meek loser Burt (William Forsythe, who’s great in this), and several others. When the play – which is about prison life and the thread of hope prisoners have – is met with resounding approval. Lee is asked to perform the play again and again, and over the course of several years, he tweaks and refines the play with songs and variations as some of his cast members are eventually paroled, but the mainstay is Lee, who has no real hope of ever being paroled himself … until a theater critic named Lillian (Rita Taggart) visits the prison and watches the play for herself. She is overwhelmed with emotion when she witnesses Lee’s performance and she gets the word out that “Weeds” is a work of art for the ages, which puts Lee in the media spotlight. After several more years of legal red tape, he is paroled, and Lillian becomes his patron and his girlfriend. His first order of business is to bring “Weeds” to the world, and he takes it on tour with his fellow former inmates, who’ve all been searching for purpose since being released from prison. Lee’s passion and desire to take “Weeds” on the road turns into a phenomenon as they go from high school auditoriums to off-Broadway, and then to Broadway, and eventually to a global audience through Europe. Lee’s “Weeds” turn into flowers as his vision turns him into a celebrity.
Weeds, while having its heart in the right place, meets halfway into screwball comedy and searing drama, and while that sounds like a novel marriage, the film’s tone staggers in an unstable way that never quite feels entirely genuine. I enjoyed it for its performances and its concept, but I never quite found the play within the film to be totally convincing. We see chunks of it throughout the movie in its various stages, and I found it really bizarre and weird with goofy songs and props (an old cat is part of the play, for instance). Overall, the film is very earnest and Nolte leads a strong ensemble, and co-writer / director John Hancock never quite gives his movie a clear conviction from which to base the film. It’s worth watching, though, and while it’s dated and a little wonky, it might still work for fans of its great cast alone.
MVD Marquee Collection brings Weeds to Blu-ray for the first time, and though Hancock approved the 2K scan, there were several instances where there was a noticeable purplish bleed to skin tones that were impossible not to gawk at. The disc contains a new interview with Hancock, a short film by Hancock, and the trailer, plus a slipcover.
