The Majestic

Released 2001
Stars Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Laurie Holden, Bob Balaban, Gerry Black, Jeffrey DeMunn, Catherine Dent, Hal Holbrook, Ron Rifkin, David Ogden Stiers, James Whitmore
Directed by Frank Darabont

The Majestic takes place in the early 1950s. The Cold War is well underway and Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist fervor is at its peak. No one is safe from government bullying - especially in Hollywood, long viewed as a hotbed of seditious activity. Screenwriter Peter Appleton (Jim Carrey), whose movie, Sand Pirates of the Sahara, has just reached screens, is no exception. Years ago in college, he attended a pro-Communist meeting to impress a girl. Now, that simple action has come back to haunt him, as he finds himself blacklisted and called to testify in front of Congress. The night when Peter learns that his life will never be the same, he drinks himself into a stupor, then crashes his car into a river. He wakes up on a beach with no memory of who he is. But the citizens of the small, nearby town have no such uncertainty - he is Luke Trimble, a war hero who was reported missing in action 9 1/2 years earlier. Luke is welcomed home by everyone, including his aging father, Harry (Martin Landau), the mayor (Jeffrey DeMunn), and the love of his life, Adele Stanton (Laurie Holden). With the help of the townsfolk, Luke and Harry set to work restoring the local movie theater, The Majestic, to its former glory. But not everyone believes in the miracle of Luke's return, and the government is looking for Peter Appleton.

Summary by James Berardinelli

"The Majestic" is an unabashedly sentimental movie about small-town America in the 1950's. It paints a rosy picture of that lost era, but there's a lot of truth to we see. I grew up in a small town that had some of the elements of this one, and it definitely made me feel like I was home. The movie centers around a case of amnesia, which always makes me wonder how many people in this world have actually ever had amnesia. As often as it happens in the movies, you'd think it happened every day. The first two acts build a wonderfully sentimental trip to a small town that was exceptionally hard hit with losses from W.W.II, and it slowly builds a moral dilemma for Peter Appleton. We know he has to eventually recover his memory, and I wanted to see him struggle with the dilemma of either remaining the beloved Luke Trimble or attempting to return to the life of a potentially blacklisted screenwriter. Instead, we were given a tepid courtroom scene and a dubious hero's welcome. The third act was too obviously manipulative, and it just didn't work. The things that did work, however, were the shy romance and the sense of a wounded town finding some healing. There's also some great music. I'm not even sure how to categorize the music at the party (swing? big band? schmaltz?), but it's wonderful. The clarinet is absolutely gorgeous, and I can now understand why Benny Goodman was so beloved. We went to our county fair yesterday, and we went on a ride that was belching out some gangsta rap. It made me long to return to a simpler time when there was a strong sense of community, and when a clarinet could captivate a room. --Bill Alward, August 3, 2002