Jack Goes Boating

Director: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Ryan, Joe Ortiz, Daphne Rubin-Vega.

Jack Goes Boating is the directorial debut for acting wonder kid Philip Seymour Hoffman highlighting a role reversal that has become endemic in the world of cinema.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away – well, some considerable distance for mere mortals in Leicestershire – Hollywood was a social hierarchy.
Directors wanted to be in front of the cameras as well as behind; writers and cinematographers wanted to direct while the technicians who actually made the movie were just happy to be.
Then actors wanted to show they were more than just a pretty face. Luvvies like Richard Attenborough were the first get behind the camera and were swiftly followed on the other side of the Atlantic by Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford and then the likes of Sean Penn.
It was inevitable that a man known for playing Truman Capote, an actor who could easily be considered the best of his generation would want to direct.
He made difficult films like Happiness watchable; he stole Mission Impossible 3 from under Tom Cruise’s, his own star vehicle blockbuster. In short he can’t put a foot wrong.
And the same can be said with Jack Goes Boating when he’s in front of the camera. Every second on screen Hoffman is engaging and he performs his role as Jack, a socially awkward middle-aged limo driver in New York with aplomb.
He has all the tics and mannerisms you would expect of someone who is nervous around women, and when betraying thoughts and emotions, even down to a well-placed cough like a drying throat. Hoffman does everything you would expect him to and more.
A tenderness rarely seen in Hollywood actors shines through his performance especially when he confronts his phobia of being in water and his determination to cook a meal.
Co-star Amy Ryan also puts in a fine performance as Connie, a sales woman trying to turn her life around despite a lot of emotional baggage.
She is more than a match for Hoffman while Jack and Connie develop their relationship at a patient pace while they plan to go boating in the summer.
But perhaps Hoffman’s acting in front of the camera is distracting him from his first experience at helming.
The film plods along at just too slow a pace and while less can be more at times, in this case the more you get, the better it is.
Joe Ortiz as Clyde and Daphne Rubin-Vega are welcome additions to a film about real people with real issues but they are not utilised as much as they should be.
There’s a hidden issue about what happens the trials and tribulations and couples that is looked at, but never explored to its full potential.
For a first stab at directing, there are moments of brilliance.
In the moments leading up the film’s climatic scene the fast editing and hallucinatory sequences are awesome, and clearly an influence of his previous boss Paul Thomas Anderson. But more of that is needed.