Even Pacino can't save 'Humbling'

<b>Mini-review: "The Humbling"</b>

Barry Levinson's halfhearted tragic comedy "The Humbling" hits its shrill high note early on when washed-up, aging actor Simon Axler takes a swan dive off the stage and smashes face-first into a vacant orchestra pit while performing Shakespeare's "As You Like It."

As I did not like it, "The Humbling" itself dives into vacant, witless meandering with Al Pacino acting his heart out, presumably to keep us from nodding off or to keep himself from doing the same.

I am not a fan of voice-over narration or of the lazy use of psychiatrists providing constant commentary on characters and their motivations. This movie has both.

Based on Philip Roth's 30th novel, "The Humbling" presents a ridiculous, posterior-testing sexual fantasy about a once-great stage actor (Pacino's Axler) suffering from a midlife crisis and a perception problem: It's becoming difficult for him to tell the difference between acting make-believe and reality.

Into his self-centered, lonely life comes a much younger woman, Pegeen, a lesbian willing to call her relationship with her sex-changed lover "a 16-year mistake" so she can bed down with Axler.

Turns out she has fantasized about marrying Axler ever since she was a little girl, back when he acted onstage with her mother (Dianne Wiest) and once gave her a ring.

"I've been thinking inappropriate thoughts about you back when it was really inappropriate!" Pegeen tells Axler.

A miscast Greta Gerwig plays Pegeen as a legal version of Lolita, sans the sort of appeal that might attract Axler, and her lover (Billy Porter) and a college dean (Kyra Sedgwick) she sleeps with to get a teaching position.

Every once in a while, the adapted screenplay by Buck Henry and Michal Zebede stumbles upon a silly moment or two (Axler attempting to talk after taking an animal muscle relaxant musters a cheap chortle).

Yet, the running gag of a wealthy woman (Nina Arianda) pushing Axler to murder her husband (she saw the actor play a killer once and knows he can do it) never musters a comic payoff commensurate with the time it takes for Levinson to set it up.

"The Humbling" hosts a lot of name actors in supporting roles: Dylan Baker plays the shrink. Charles Grodin plays the agent. Blink and you'll miss Dan Hedaya in this tragic comedy.

Tragic there isn't more comedy.

But then, it's difficult to actually get into any film when the press screener comes marred with the critic's name in big white letters across the screen, along with the date and a digital clock racing through the seconds, constantly pulling the eyes away from the actual movie itself.

Only in Hollywood do executives choose to make their products look bad, just for the press.

<b>"The Humbling" opens at the South Barrington 30. Rated R for language, sexual situations, violence. 104 minutes. ★ ½</b>