Reign On Me Soundtrack

Happy Birthday, Prince! Let's Look at Your 'Best' Film Work

For a performer who mostly eschewed award shows, Prince gave a surprisingly humble, straightforward, and grateful acceptance speech upon winning Best Original Song Score at the 1985 Oscars. Wendy and Lisa flanked him, of course, but the show-stealing guest-star here is Prince’s glittery hood. Looks like a thief in Dorothy Chandler’s temple!

As a concerned promoter of Bad Movies We Love , I encourage you to think of this movie more often. Prince directed this cinematic disaster (as if you couldn’t tell by the “Raspberry Beret”-licious edits), daring to cast himself as a gigolo and engage in salty badinage with stuffy ladies. Explain to me your reaction when you hear Prince yell, “Cabbage head!” I think I’m… emotionally bereft?

Home Cinema @ The Digital Fix - Reign Over Me

In New York city a man loses his wife in a senseless and wanton act of barbarity. As a result of the trauma he folds in on himself into a fantasy world of his own making, a world from which he cannot emerge unaided. He is sustained in his quest to return to normality by a lesser-affected but similarly lost soul. This friend ultimately guides him towards facing the tragedy, finding love and building a new life.

Yes, I thought it sounded familiar too.

In 1990 Terry Gilliam managed to produce something quite magical from this plot, something whimsical, charming and romantic yet at the same time traumatic, disturbing and above all else highly intelligent. That little gem was called The Fisher King and has been cherished fondly by many film fans for the last 17 years.

Reign Over Me mugs The Fisher King in a dark alleyway, stabs it in the back, tears the flesh from its story, straight from the bone and grafts it onto its own rotting carcass. They even shoehorned a John DeLancie cameo in there in case you possibly missed the point. The twist here however is that they actually uses a real life tragedy as the backdrop.

In this re-imagining of the same plot Adam Sandler plays Charlie Fineman, a man who loses his wife and three daughters to the events of 9/11. Fineman falls to pieces as a result and retreats to a world where he refuses to acknowledge that they ever existed. He listens to Bruce Springsteen loudly on his ipod whilst traversing the city on a motorised pedal scooter and mumbling incoherently to himself. Don Cheadle plays a former college room mate of Sandlers. When they reconnect Sandler considers him safe because he has no first hand knowledge of his wife and children, he simply knows that they perished in 9/11. Slowly Cheadle tries to get Sandler to open up and confront the tragedy. After a failed attempt to self-destruct Sandler ends up in hospital, his fate to be decided in court. He ultimately leaves court to start a new life with a hint of romance it would appear engineered or encouraged by Cheadle.

Making a film can be like building a house of cards, each element has to be carefully arranged. The foundations of a good story and script require to be under pinned by a good director that understands and can creatively interpret the material. The producer has to assemble a creative support, a director of photography that can capture the director’s vision, a production designer that can give the film an identifiable look and feeling. Once this house of cards has been delicately, pain stakingly and nerve wrackingly put together, then the last cards have to be placed on top. The actors. They have to be carefully cast and placed on the structure with the hands of a surgeon, one false move and the house of cards may crumble into a scattered deck. In the case of Reign Over Me casting Adam Sandler is like building that house of cards in a wind tunnel.

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