Benny and Joon
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Movie Reviews of Benny and Joon
Movie Review: All you need is love - no matter how quirky it might be
Summary: 5 Stars
I've been a fan of Mary Stuart Masterson ever since I saw Some Kind of Wonderful, and Johnny Depp plays the kind of quirky characters I usually like, but something had kept me away from Benny & Joon all this time. Partly, it was the fact that I caught a few minutes of the movie on TV and saw Depp doing a whole vaudeville routine that smacked a little too much of mimes - like every sane person in the world, I detest mimes. At last, though, I have seen the film and I can declare it a wonderful motion picture - quirky, most certainly, but good and exceedingly human. It does stretch the theme of love conquers all just a bit, but who cares?
Mary Stuart Masterson plays Joon, a young woman with a mental illness that is never clearly delineated - she's been known to start little fires, she sometimes hears voices in her head, and there is a somewhat childlike character to her nature. Aidan Quinn plays her brother Benny, a truly good guy who puts his sister's needs ahead of his own - even if it means turning down dinner with a hot chick. The siblings are approaching a crossroads, though - Joon has just run off another housekeeper, Benny can't find anyone to stay with her during the day, and all the while Joon's doctor is urging Benny to put her in a group home. Then Sam (Johnny Depp) arrives, after Joon wins him in a poker game - he's one of Benny's buddy's cousins, and he's driving the guy crazy. Benny takes him home temporarily, and things soon begin to change around the house.
Sam is even weirder than Joon (he makes grilled cheese sandwiches with an iron, for example), so naturally the two hit it off quite well. He has his own problems, but his quirky ways and Buster Keaton-inspired antics quickly win over Benny and most especially Joon. Benny even starts seeing a local girl named Ruthie (Julianne Moore), whom Sam immediately recognized as a B-movie actress from a few years past. Then, of course, romantic love rears its ugly head, and things go south in a hurry for everyone concerned, pushing Joon into a serious episode that shows Sam just how sick she really is.
Aidan Quinn is quite good in his role of Benny (and Julianne Moore is a nice bonus for the film), but Depp and Masterson clearly carry the story with their characters' quirky antics and heart-warming commitment to one another. As I alluded to, I'm not a fan of the whole Buster Keaton comedy shtick, but Depp proves a master at it, and he and Masterson have a real chemistry between them. There's high drama alongside a fair amount of subdued comedy, but Benny & Joon is an unashamedly feel-good movie, quite predictable yet charming and touching - and blessed with an extremely talented cast.
Movie Review: A Johnny Depp Classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Forget Don Juan DeMarco, forget Sleepy Hollow, forget any other Johnny Depp film (except Cry Baby *drool*). This is THE Johnny Depp film. You have to see it. It's Johnny Depp at his best. I've had this film recorded from the TV for ages, and typical, my tape ran out, and I missed only the last 15 minutes (and what a disappointment they were!)Johnny Depp plays the loveable Sam, who's cheese seems to have come off his cracker. His whole character, moves, voice, and his funny comedic moments are a total take-off of Charlie Chaplin & all those actors from the "good old days". He is taken in by Benny & Joon. The lovely Aidan Quinn plays Benny, looking after his sister, Joon, played by Mary Stuart Masterson (who I still say was in Little House On The Prarie, but no one believes me!). Joon is "mentally ill" or "sick" - the film never actually says what's wrong with her. I think she's either autistic or schizophrenic - sorry if that's wrong, or she's not one or the other, but I always get them muddled up! She lives to a routine (that makes me think autistic), but she switches personalities (schizophrenic?). I love watching this little routine, watching her make breakfast, or the way she goes to sleep at night, or the way she paints - she gets more of it on her than she does on the canvas! Enter Benny. Who she instantly falls in love with. The music behind the love scene is brilliant, and well played by Johnny & Mary.
There's a few classic moments in this film - mainly thanks to Johnny Depp. Just wait til you see him do his whole performance in the park, or his little dance with the bread in the restaurant. Or making a toasted cheese sandwich by ironing it, and making mashed potatoes by hitting them with a tennis racket. If that doesn't make you want to see this film, nothing will. And the classic line? "Raisins are just humiliated grapes". I love this film. It doesn't show much about the mentally ill, and at the end, there's too many things left in the open. Like what happens to Benny & the woman he fancies, Ruthie (played by Julianne Moore)? We see Joon getting her own apartment, but how is it decorated? Are there paintings everywhere? And does Sam move in with her? All will be discovered in the sequel ... I wish.
Bring on the soundtrack!
Movie Review: The Best Romantic Comedy I've Ever Seen
Summary: 5 Stars
In the last ten years box offices have seen so many bad romantic comedies that it's hard to believe directors even try anymore. Even the ones that aren't awful aren't necessarily good, for example most of Meg Ryan and Jennifer Lopez's movies don't qualify as either. However, after I saw Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns in the horrific chick-flick `Life or Something Like It' I had to ask myself: "Has there ever been a good romantic comedy? Why do people still see these things? Isn't it obvious that the genre of romantic-comedy is a completely lost cause?" Then I saw this movie. If `Benny and Joon' is nothing else, it is solid proof that there is such a thing as a good romantic comedy. Aidan Quinn and Mary Stuart Masterson play dysfunctional siblings, Benny and Joon Pearl. Benny is a car mechanic whose dull life revolves around taking care of his mentally unstable sister, Joon. The climax of Benny's week takes during poker night with his friends. On one arbitrary night, Benny takes Joon with him, Joon ends up playing and looses. Benny and his friends always play for keeps, and as a result of Joon's loss is Benny has to take his friend's illiterate cousin, Sam (Johnny Depp), home with him.
Sam is polite and curious and Benny decides to keep him around when he inadvertently cleans the whole house during his first day with the Pearls. As time goes on, Sam's presence forces Benny and Joon to recognize long unrealized problems in their relationship, while simultaneously allowing Joon to indulge a side of herself she never knew existed.
`Benny and Joon' strikes a perfect balance between quirky and adorable, and is rather Romeo-and-Juliet-like in its ability to make an audience care about what happens to a pair of very star-crossed lovers. The astonishingly real characters and the fact that they're played by exquisitely well cast actors is probably this movies best asset in a technical sense. Aside from that I think this movie's best point, is that it is absolutely unrivaled as the best romantic comedy I've ever seen in my life.
Movie Review: The Oddly Wonderful Couple!
Summary: 5 Stars
From the riveting first scenes of an energetic locomotive, this is an upbeat movie that sensitively tackles the tough subject of mental illness. The viewer roars with laughter and roots for the two main characters splendidly played by the adept Johnny Depp and his movie paramour Mary Stuart Masterson ("Joon").
Masterson, a brilliant artist - we see her lavishly lay the paint upon the canvas - has a severe problem: she hears voices in her head. She says, with keen insight, to her loving caretaker brother ("Benny"), played by Aiden Quinn, "You need me to be mentally ill."
Indeed he does, using it as an excuse to put his own life on hold. In a plot twist, Johnny Depp comes to live with brother and sister. Depp is delightfully different in his own way. Although he can't write, he is a master comic, as hilarious as Chaplin or Buster Keaton. I found myself roaring at his ridiculous antics, including making grilled cheese sandwiches with a hot iron. Hmmmm, never thought of that.
Not surprisingly, Johnny Depp and Joon, each with their delicious quirksome natures, fall in love: spoken-for in Spokane.
Just because Masterson is ill, however, doesn't mean Johnny will forsake her. Memorable scenes include Masterson and Depp taking off on a Greyhound bus to start a new life. Stress, however, causes Masterson's voices to assault her - she holds her head in her hands in terror - and ends up in a police ambulance which takes her to a stark mental hospital.
Unthwarted, Depp figures out how to secretly visit her in one of the most hilarious moments in film history. And, yes, the caretaker brother decides that love indeed does conquer all, and has his moment of truth by a railroad train, the motif that runs throughout the film, which is also rich with great songs.
A 98-minute must-see from 1993.
Movie Review: Family, and independence from family
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a story about stagnant sibling relationships. Benny (a mechanic) has structured his entire life around 'protecting' his mentally ill sister, Joon. Both are dissatisfied: she in particular has withdrawn from society and broader human interaction, and has an underdeveloped ability to care for herself. The ensuing frustration manifests itself in pyromania.
His need for control and her isolation are tearing their relationship apart, despite the very real and visible love they have for each other. Sam is a much-needed catalyst for change. I suspect that his appeal for Joon, who is immediately drawn to him, lies in the fact that he makes absolutely no assumptions about her on the basis of her condition.
It has been said that this movie is arguing that love conquers all, but I disagree. Romantic love is presented as a mechanism of change and renewal: but the real story lies in a brother's struggle to overcome his own need to protect his sister from society, and in his blindness when it comes to her own requirements as an adult woman. The viewers and Sam himself are made to confront the very real facts of Joon's illness when their attempt to abscond results in a highly traumatic episode.
Essentially, the movie is a humorous and emotional one. While not the most polished movie you'll ever see, 'Benny and Joon' comes across as very sincere, and it isn't afraid to tackle the tough issues. Johnny Depp is as lovely as always, and the film contains moments of incredible wit, warmth, and a quirky kind of humor in its portrait a mentally ill young woman who has absolutely normal needs when it comes to love, sex, and independence.
And it's nicely gritty, too, and highly effective.