Director: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Screenplay: Robert Glaudini
Producers: Beth O’Neil, Peter Saraf, Marc Turtletaub, Emily Ziff
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Ortiz, Richard Petrocelli, Thomas McCarthy, Amy Ryan, Salvatore Inzerillo
MPAA Rating: R
Running time: 89 min.

(3/5)

For his directorial debut, a jump that didn’t surprise me when it was first announced, Philip Seymour Hoffman selected a story he was intimately familiar with. Before making its debut on celluloid, Jack Goes Boating was an immensely popular and well received stage play starring Hoffman in the lead role of Jack, a role he reprises in the film.

Adapted by Robert Glaudini from his play, the film follows the socially awkward Jack as he manoeuvres his way through what appears to be his first serious relationship while his best friend Clyde suffers through the breakup of his marriage. It’s a straight forward premise but Glaudini’s story relies on its characters to keep the story moving along and the film works better than your average awkward love story because the actors involved are all reprising their roles from the play and the result are characters who seem to live beyond the screen.

Jack Goes Boating has a lot of quirk, something which tends to rub me the wrong way, but the quirk here only helps highlight the differences between these two working-class couples, each of which has their own ups and downs. The parallel of these couples, one on the upswing and the other going down hill, is painfully obvious but the performances wash away the obvious and we fall into a rhythm with these individuals as their relationships develop and fall apart. Hoffman helps a great deal choosing to avoid the rookie mistake of flashy directing and keeping his focus on the individuals. The film’s finale is the only moment that has any real flash but the editing, music and voice over are beautifully married to create a powerful and beautiful finale to a story which is filled with so much heartache.

Hoffman is joined by fellow stage actors John Ortiz, Amy Ryan, Daphne Rubin-Vega all of whom reprise their roles and bring a wonderful richness to these characters who start off like quirky cutouts but quickly transform into real people who we care for, each of them working through their own individual problems (never mind their relationship problems). Hoffman manages something else too: to create a New York which itself feels like a character. But this isn’t the New York of the upper west side or of movies and television shows in which we never see the real New York. Production manager Thérèse DePrez fills the film with streets, places and apartments which display the city as it really is and the result is refreshing.

I didn’t love Jack Goes Boating whose story is a little too obvious for my liking and whose characters, although they grow on you, still feel like distant characters and not real people, but I did like moments of this story (particularly the aforementioned ending) and Hoffman’s direction which shows great promise.

Jack Goes Boating is available on DVD and Blu-ray on January 18th.

DVD Extras: Not much to write home about here. DVD includes a mini documentary on Jack’s New York including interviews with the production designer and writer which is interesting and should have a little longer, a short interview with cast members and writer discussing the jump from the stage to the big screen, two excruciatingly lame deleted scenes and the film’s theatrical trailer.