Jack Goes Boating

JACK GOES BOATING
TRINITY ENTERTAINMENT
RELEASED 4 November 2011

Film critics adore Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think it’s because he pauses a lot, and is usually dishevelled. Cinemagoers just think he’s a scruffy, mumbling overweight nobody. ‘Oh wait, he was the baddie in ‘Mission: Impossible III’ wasn’t he? Yeah, he was good at being nasty…’

Hoffman directs and stars in ‘Jack Goes Boating’, which is a funny title as Jack (Hoffman) mainly goes swimming. ‘Jack Goes Boating’ also sounds like a kid’s book. Jack wears an irritating brown beanie (often indoors), doesn’t have much to say, and begins a romantic relationship with Connie (Amy Ryan), when his best friend Clyde (John Ortiz) isn’t unintentionally screwing his life up.

You might be thinking I didn’t like ‘Jack Goes Boating’, but I did. Originally a stageplay, the cast are a perfect fit (they all played the roles together on stage apart from Ryan), it’s an insightful script, and it’s quite nicely filmed too from first-timer Hoffman. Essentially a tale of two people finding each other, emotional hurdles are the only things that stand in their way.

THREE OUT OF FIVE