DRAGONFLY     - A Narada Film Review
   
Dragonfly , Directed and Produced by by Tom Shadyac .

      Viewed On 07 June 2002 .

      Should any of you reading this review be planning to film a story of lost love ones in the "afterlife" , learn from this mistake by Producer/Director Tom Shadyac, and DON'T remake Ghost , DON'T remake Sixth Sense , and especially DON'T make a hybrid of the two - unless of course, mediocrity is your life's ambition.
       Kevin Costner is Dr. Joe Darrow , whose wife Emily (Susanna Thopmson) , is in a self-induced fit of "do-right-by mankind", so she gets herself pregnant and departs for the deepest jungles of Venezuela in order to make the world a better place.    (I'm not making any of this up.)    She is involved in a tragic accident on a mountain road, and all are presumed dead.
       By way of deep, heart-felt mourning, Dr. Joe, who is a workaholic to begin with, takes an entire evening's break from his duties at the hospital in remembrance of his dead wife, before deciding that becoming even more of a workaholic is the best way to cope.    His work suffers and the hospital administrator insists that Dr Joe take a break, however he continues to come to work.
      He begins to get strange signals, see dragonflys, and say trite things because of these trying and stressful times.    Or is there something more to it than the effects of stress?    Are all these signs an indication that she is dead, but trying to contact him?   Or, is she still alive and trying to contact him?   What?    Is he loosing it?    No, he decides he is not loosing it when he visits some of Emily's previous child cancer ward patients.    They, too, have seen signs.
      He needs to know, one way or the other.   He finally gets some sound advice from Miriam Belmont ( Cathy Bates ) , and things start to come back into focus.    Melodramatic confrontations and occult meetings with Nuns are not the answer; direct action is.    He puts his affairs in order & leaves for the Venezuelan jungles, and soon finds himself up to his eyebrows in stereotyped South American bureaucratic red tape, triple canopy jungle foliage, torrential rains and unfriendly locals (who knew?).
      The story works its way toward a conclusion in some very beautiful countryside. (Countryside made all the more beautiful by cinematographer Dean Semler (who worked with Costner in Dances With Wolves ).    Notwithstanding excellent performances by all, the dialog was quite often downright embarrassing; if the viewer is meant to suspend disbelief and go for an exciting ride into the afterlife, one doesn't start by insulting his or her intelligence.    One hopes very much that no dragonflys were harmed during the filming of this movie.

        LEAST Enduring Line Or Phrase:   If we can create this world with what we imagine, why not the next?"

Reviewed by Narada for Bangkok Eyes - 07 June 2002

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