'Charlie' fails to cash in
By Mike Nicholson
Within the genre of mystery-romance-whodunnit-comedy-thrillers, "The Truth About Charlie" does pretty well. That being said, the genre is not known for great films.
The movie begins as Ragina Lambert (Thandie Newton) returns from her vacation to find her apartment empty, her bank accounts dry and her husband of three months (the Charlie of the title) dead. During questioning by police it is revealed that there is more to Charlie than Ragina ever imagined. Several passports from many countries, each with different names and his picture, were found in his bag. As she attempts to track down the last days of Charlie's life she gets mixed up in a competition between some mysterious strangers and a U.S. government agent over some $6 million missing that they all claim Charlie bequeathed to Ragina. The whole time, a man she met while on vacation called Joshua Peters (Mark Wahlberg), appears whenever she is in distress.
The movie is overall entertaining and fun to watch, with a couple laughs here and there. The plot flows well for most of the movie and keeps the viewer second-guessing over about the true identity of almost every character. The character development is rich enough to make me care when a character had an untimely death but is not entirely impressive. The camera movement is a bit rough at times but only when appropriate and never enough to make anyone ill.
Since this movie has short spurts of suspense, smooth plot twists, well timed comic relief and good cinematography, what could it possibly be lacking? Perhaps good acting during the more intense scenes and a plot resolution that is not reminiscent of "Scooby Doo."
During the more intense scenes, characters seem to jump out of character. The naive become omniscient, the cold-blooded killer becomes caring and concerned, and the spy stumbles on a lie. These rough transitions make it hard to figure out where the story might be going, and when the climax even occurs. The resulting plot completing explanation thrown in at the end to tie up all the plot holes leaves the viewer with an empty feeling deep inside as they leave the theater.
In the end, the identity crisis of the movie is its undoing. The movie just tries to do too much. If it had left out any element of the murder mystery-thriller-romance-comedy it may have had time to fulfill the other goals before boring the audience.
In spite of these problems, I did not leave the theater angry that I had lost two hours of my life. I was entertained and liked the movie until I began to think about it in depth. This entertaining value is enough to warrant spending the time to see it, but I'm afraid the other problems might not make it worth the $8 it will cost to see it in theaters.