The Hoax
Rated: R In 1974, Orson Welles made a brilliant film called F for Fake. It’s a documentary that examines the complexity of truth, lies, fiction, and fact. The first act focuses on an art forger and then the second act focuses on the biographer of that forger who himself became weaver of falsehoods. The man of the second act is Clifford Irving, who in 1971, created a massive hoax by claiming he was authorized to write the official autobiography of billionaire-lunatic Howard Hughes. 
The new film based on this real fake decides that since Welles pretty much mined the story for all the good and fascinating stuf and transformed it into the cinematic perfection that only Welles could, this paltry dramedy will focus on…um, friendship? That seems to be the crux of the story as Richard Gere (Irving) and Alfred Molina (Dick Suskind) keep trying to take their scam one step further. But the film makes Irving seem like a greedy douchebag who’s willing to trade all that’s real in his life for money, fame, women, and all that glitters. An actor with more charm could sell it but I’ve never found Gere to be particularly charming. At his most charming, he seems more like a snake-oil salesman than someone who could genuinely make you cheer. At best we only have Molina as the pathetic sidekick who is too greedy to get out but too scared to go all in. While the two men play off each other fairly well, once they disconnect in the third act, the film searches for a new purpose and then becomes a crummy immitation of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. Despite a few good laughs and a couple interesting questions about our desire for entertainment, The Hoax isn’t charming enough to be a breezy film and it isn’t smart enough to be an interesting film. It’s a film for adults where any adult who sees it will wish they had gone to see something better. Words by |