Review: Color Me Kubrick (2005)
The poster for “Color Me Kubrick”, featuring John Malkovich as a fruity, vaguely malicious hen who seems to have jumped ship from the nearest John Waters film, promises a dark, campy, comedy that the film never rouses itself to deliver. John Malkovich is Alan Conway, a man who successfuly scammed drinks, sex, and lodging from various people (usually on the fringe of showbiz themselves) by claiming to be Stanley Kubrick. Conway looks nothing like Stanley Kubrick, and, when challenged, knows little of the man’s work, but his brazen confidence somehow fulfills people’s notion of how a reclusive, legendary filmmaker should act.
Director Brian W. Cook (who, it should be noted, served as an assitant director on Eyes Wide Shut) has fun re-staging Conway’s exploits as broad visual parodies of Kubrick’s most famous films, and Malkovich truly has to be seen to be believed, he’s bizarre even by the standards of the Malkovich canon, but the film, ultimately, goes nowhere. “Color Me Kubrick” serves us, for 86 minutes, the same scene over and over again: Conway does his schtick, collects his reward, the mark discovers the truth, Conway runs off. Eventually, Conway fakes his way into a mental institute to evade the press and potential legal difficulty. Oops, I ruined the big ending.
- Bowen
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