Movie Review: Last Chance Harvey
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We’re still recovering from the Starz Film Festival that happened this past week in Denver. It was a great show as usual. Amazing movies and too many late nights…but that didn’t stop us from catching the closing night film, Last Chance Harvey. This Dustin Hoffman vehicle is a rare find these days. A romantic movie for the much older crowd. No, we don’t mean thirty and older. We’re talking seventy and older. Big time older and if this movie proves anything…age ain’t nothing but a number.
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen Dustin Hoffman in this kind of role. For the last ten years or so, he’s been relegated to a fraction of his acting abilities. He’s been stuck in the same lame comedies and just never seemed to live up to his potential until now. This is a role he chews up quite nicely. Dustin plays Harvey Shine, a down-on-his-luck jingle writer, who just can’t seem to get his career or his family on track. Harvey finds out that he’s losing his job right about the same time he’s leaving for London for his daughter’s wedding. His ex-wife doesn’t care for him that much and his daughter would rather have her step-dad give her away at the altar. We haven’t seen this much self-loathing since Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.
Things aren’t looking too good for Harvey, until he meets Emma Thompson at the airport. We didn’t think we would buy this romance, but they really did pull it off. They have a surprising amount of chemistry together.
This isn’t a perfect film by any means. There are logical flaws, sub plots that absolutely go nowhere, and you could argue that large parts were pretty predictable. But, we’re big supporters of something different and this fits that description. There is a certain charm to Harvey, even with all of its flaws. It reminds us of a much simpler time; similar to those old 1940s films when everyone falling in love was a little older and wasn’t necessarily from the CW network with a fresh driver’s license.
Check it out when it comes your way later this year. Mr. Hoffman will be grateful.
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