I am not supposed to have seen the movie I’m about to write about. The studio distributing “Nice Guy Johnny,” which officially opens the 25th annual Fort Lauderdale Film Festival on Friday, made this abundantly clear when I first began preparing coverage for the festival: “Nice Guy Johnny” screeners would be not be distributed to the press.
It’s never a good sign when the media is barred from seeing a film in advance; this usually happens because the studio isn’t very confident in the product they’re offering. This time, the press blackout was surprising considering that we’re not dealing with some low-rent horror film or brainless action movie. ‘Nice Guy Johnny” is the latest film from writer/director/star Edward Burns, once a prominent name in American independent cinema whose low-key comedy-dramas “The Brothers McMullen” and “Sidewalks of New York” are quietly absorbing. Burns and costar Matt Bush will even be attendance at Friday’s opening.
As it turns out, “Nice Guy Johnny” is hitting home video retailers next week from MPI Media, and it just so happens I received a copy of the DVD a few days before the film’s FLIFF premiere. Let me be the first-and probably only-critic in the area to warn you that this film is absolutely ghastly. It’s a hackneyed “follow your dreams” parable about the title character, a milquetoast 25-year-old host of a beloved but low-paying sports-talk show in Oakland (Bush) whose insensitive and judgmental fiancee Claire (Anna Wood) is pressuring him to take a lucrative managerial position in the banal cardboard-box company run by a friend of her father’s in New York.
Sucking up his pride, he’s planning on accepting the job on a solo trip to New York weeks before his wedding. But correspondences with his chauvinistic playboy uncle Terry (Burns) and Brooke (Kerry Bishe), the caring, blonde stoner Terry callously sets him up with in the Hamptons, predictably cause him to have second thoughts.
Burns used to have an insightful ear for authentic human dialogue, but that facet of his talent has apparently withered into crude, trite cliches. “Nice Guy Johnny” is a painfully unfunny comedy without an inspired laugh anywhere, and because most of Burns’ screenwriting creations are smug and self-centered, it’s difficult to sympathize with any of them. Claire is the most one-dimensional caricature of them all, a domineering hen-pecker whom Burns insultingly demonizes so we can project all of our affections onto Brooke. We never see Claire exhibiting any love toward the man she’s supposed to marry-presumably for the money he doesn’t have yet.
Now, I know opening-night films are not, customarily, the deepest and most profound selections in film festivals. And there are great films screening at FLIFF this year-I recommend the likable satire “The Trotsky,” the revealing documentary “Norman Mailer: The American” and the enraging tragedy “When We Leave.” But the opening-night film sets a certain tone for the festival, and “Nice Guy Johnny” is a pretty irresponsible and, I would hope, misleading barometer of the majority of FLIFF’s content this year. No wonder I wasn’t allowed to see it.
For a full schedule of festival events, visit fliff.com. “Nice Guy Johnny” screens at 7 p.m. Friday at Bailey Hall on the Broward Community College campus, 351 SW Davie Road. All other screenings are at Cinema Paradiso, 503 SE Sixth St., Fort Lauderdale. The festival runs through Nov. 11.
