{"id":1717,"date":"2011-09-01T19:01:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-02T02:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=1717"},"modified":"2011-09-03T04:41:37","modified_gmt":"2011-09-03T11:41:37","slug":"review-seven-days-in-utopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=1717","title":{"rendered":"Review: Seven Days in Utopia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>The legendary golfer Bobby Jones was quoted as saying that \u201cgolf is a game that is played on a five-inch course – the distance between your ears.\u201d This is probably the reason why the almost mystical sport has not yielded many great movies. Filming what is going on in a golfer\u2019s head has to be an almost impossible task. <\/p>\n

In \u201cSeven Days in Utopia\u201d aspiring professional golfer Luke Chisholm (Lucas Black) experiences a meltdown of epic proportions during a tournament. The meltdown is captured on national television making him a laughing stock. Even his father, who also serves as his caddy, turns his back on Luke. Wracked with despair, Luke aimlessly drives from the course only to have an accident in the dreamy little Texas town of Utopia. Now stranded, he meets the wise and kind Johnny Crawford (Robert Duvall), a former golf professional whose career ended badly. Maybe Johnny can help Luke find his game.<\/p>\n

The problems with \u201cSeven Days in Utopia\u201d are too numerous to list. While the production is competent from a technical perspective, the narrative is hopelessly contrived. The relationship between Johnny and Luke lacks any sort of authenticity. The script, which is credited to four writers including the novelist, David Cook, who penned the source material, displays little comprehension of the mentor relationship. Johnny\u2019s demons are long behind him. Luke\u2019s demons are all around him. But while Johnny can help Luke, there is nothing that Luke can offer Johnny.<\/p>\n

Mentorship is magical when the benefits are mutual. The best of these teacher\/student relationships result in improvement and growth by both parties. And movies often capture the pathos of this symbiotic process vividly. \u201cGood Will Hunting,\u201d \u201cFinding Forrester,\u201d and \u201cAntwone Fisher\u201d are good modern examples. And even more recently \u201cThe Blind Side\u201d proved that the familiar material can work in the religious\/inspirational setting as well. \u201cUtopia\u201d fails to follow the examples set by those films. The mentor in the film, Johnny, does not appear to grow at all by virtue of his relationship with Luke. Such story telling is lazy, unsophisticated, and boring, and, sadly, \u201cSeven Days in Utopia\u201d is all of those things and worse.<\/p>\n

Worse? How could a movie be worse than lazy and boring? \u201cSeven Days in Utopia\u201d actually concludes with intentional viewer frustration. We get a frustrating cheat of an ending that is as much a product of the technological age as it is the result of inexperienced, ill-advised filmmaking. This alone makes \u201cUtopia\u201d one of the worst films of this or any year.<\/p>\n

Robert Duvall gets a pass for this one. His name and reputation probably helped get the movie made and will sell tickets. But when I spoke with him at the movie\u2019s premiere, he told me that he made the movie because he likes to work. His response lacked passion. As a comparison, when I asked him about working with Billy Bob Thornton on the upcoming \u201cJayne Mansfield\u2019s Car,\u201d he was immediately enthusiastic and eager to say good things. Duvall\u2019s attitude toward \u201cUtopia\u201d points up a telling truth about the movie: it lacks passion that could be shared with viewers.<\/p>\n

One of the most surprising things about the film is that it screened for critics. \u201cSeven Days in Utopia\u201d is, after all, the \u201cFireproof\u201d of golf movies. And like \u201cFireproof\u201d the characters that populate the \u201cUtopia\u201d landscape are the product of an idealized Christian universe where no one uses expletives and sex is a mystery left to be discovered in the darkened safety of the bedrooms of married couples. And those couples are of the traditional variety.<\/p>\n

There is nothing wrong with making a movie from a religious perspective. And many movies use Christian allegories in subtle and sophisticated ways. But in order for the message to carry any kind of weight, it must engage the viewer drawing him or her into a familiar world. And in that world people cuss and even kiss on the first date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The “Fireproof” of golf movies is all teed up…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1741,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}