Diminished Capacity Review
By David Kempler
Diminishing Returns
Sometimes you expect a film to really get going but "Diminished Capacity" never even attains that distinction. It plods along quirkily, substituting eccentric behavior for a plot worth caring about. It's akin to watching gentle waves washing against the shore. It's pleasant enough but ninety minutes of it is taxing to even the most ardent fan of water and sand.
"Diminished Capacity" is directed by Terry Kinney, far better known for his acting, primarily on television. I particularly liked his work on HBO's "Oz". Here Kinney steps behind the camera for the second time (he also directed a few episodes of "Oz").
Cooper (Matthew Broderick) is a journalist from Chicago who suffered a brain injury as the result of a fight. Instead of his normal position as a columnist he has been reduced to proofing comic strips and he's not real good at that either, but the paper keeps him on while he slowly recuperates. His mother asks him to return to his rural hometown to help her deal with his Uncle Rollie (Alan Alda) who is also suffering from diminished capacity due to Alzheimer's. Back at home he is also reunited with his old flame, Charlotte (Virginia Madsen).
Now that our collection has been assembled we need to give them a story. If that sounds a bit mechanical, it is. The device chosen is a baseball card. It's not just any baseball card, though. It is the granddaddy of all baseball cards. The card is of Frank Schulte, who played right field for the 1908 Chicago Cubs, which represents the last time the Cubs won the World Series. No other copies of the card are known to still exist and its value could be what saves Uncle Rollie from having to go to a home to live out his final years.
By coincidence there is a big card show coming up in Chicago and that's where everyone heads to cash in. Because this is a comedy, at least to some extent, the goings-on that take place in the Windy City are intended to both amuse the audience and at the same time make us fret. It does neither. Not even a little bit. It is beyond predictable every step of the way until you just wish you could step on the accelerator and speed up the film. I tried but I could not get that to happen no matter how hard I willed it to be.
Matthew Broderick can add this to his collection of underplayed roles that he likes to take from time to time, like in "
Election" and "
You Can Count on Me". Neither of those films particularly excited me either but at least there was somewhat of an interesting story to go along with the quirkiness. Hopefully, for him, his next attempt in this vein will not feel so diminished.
