'Papa' not a novel approach to Hemingway or his work
Bob Yari's "Papa: Hemingway in Cuba" is the first Hollywood movie to be shot in Cuba since its 1959 revolution,
It's such an emotionally vacant and sterile work of drama that it may well be the last one, at least for a while.
This smaller-than-life movie tells the fact-based story of a reporter's friendship with bigger-than-life writer Ernest Hemingway during the final months of his life.
It stars reliable character actor Giovanni Ribisi as Ed Myers, a Miami Globe reporter whose admiration for Hemingway's sparse prose prompts him to write a fan note to the famed novelist.
If this isn't obvious enough, Ed's superfluous/redundant voice-over narration tips us off: "I needed to tell him how much he meant to me!"
Even so, Ed, an orphan looking for a father figure, can't muster the courage to mail his letter to Hemingway.
Good thing his co-worker and casual sex partner Debbie Hunt (Minka Kelly in a thankless, subservient role) is a "nosy Nancy" who sends the letter without Ed's knowledge.
The phone rings.
Ed answers.
"It's a good letter, kid!" a voice says. "You like to fish?"
From here on in, "Papa" serves as a warning to all fans not to get too close to their idols, for their humanity will humble them in time.
Ed zips off to meet his hero, first glimpsed as a towering, backlighted shadow on the roof of a fishing boat.
Adrian Sparks, a British-born Shakespearean actor who earned acclaim for his 2005 L.A. performance of Hemingway in the one-man play "Papa," reprises the character here, first as an underplayed gentleman, later as an erupting volcano of self-destructive malice and madness.
Joely Richardson plays Mary, the writer's wife, who can't be bothered with swimming suits every time she likes to take a dip in the pool.
"Papa" is based on screenwriter Denne Bart Petitclerc's friendship with the novelist, expanded to include a Hollywoodish plot between the FBI and Mafia to use Ed as an informant against Hemingway, suspected of supplying illegal guns to anti-government forces in the time before the revolution.
Strangely enough, even though Petitclerc had first-person material to work with for his screenplay, very little of "Papa" resonates with authenticity, either in character or plot, and the dialogue hardly equates to anything we might imagine Hemingway would say.
"We're all gonna die sometime, kid!" Hemingway screeches while waving a Luger pistol.
"You don't have to do this!" Ed says, tapping one of Hollywood's favorite auto-reply responses.
Director Yari, a producer on the Oscar-winning best picture "Crash," puts his cast through their paces, but these performances lack chemistry and spontaneity, as evidenced by the stagy, unconvincing climactic confrontation between the writer, his wife and the journalist.
Nonetheless, the movie's stunningly well-preserved 1950s automobiles radiate color, and Ernesto Melara's widescreen camera lens captures some gorgeous Cuban sunrises and cityscapes clearly intended to break up the bulk of the drama, confined to Hemingway's pastoral home and a well-stocked bar or two.
“Papa: Hemingway in Cuba”
★ ½
Starring: Giovanni Ribisi, Adrian Sparks, Joely Richardson, Minka Kelly, Mariel Hemingway
Directed by: Bob Yari
Other: A Yari Film Group release. Rated R for language, nudity, sexual situations, violence. 109 minutes