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Crazy Like A Fox

2004, Movie, PG-13, 99 mins

Crazy Like A Fox: Review

CRAZY LIKE A FOX
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Off-Broadway-theater veteran Richard Squires' uneven filmmaking debut sets the hounds of progress on the heels of an old-fashioned Southern gentleman in the form of modern-day carpetbaggers. Nathaniel Banks' (Roger Rees) family has lived in Virginia since before the war — the Revolutionary War — and his ancestors palled around with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. The 700-acre family estate, Greenwood, has long since fallen into genteel squalor, but Nat still lives in the ruined big house with his wife, Amy (Mary McDonnell), whose family roots reach back almost as far as his, and their two children. Unfortunately, they're dead broke and Nat's magnificent indifference to such petty matters as taxes and insurance premiums have left the place in danger of foreclosure. Amy prevails upon him to put it up for sale, attracting big-city sharpies Will and Ellie Sherman (Paul Fitzgerald, Christina Rouner), whom Nat suspects will demolish the house and subdivide the land for cookie-cutter town-house developments. They claim they want to live in the house, hire Nat to run the property, keep the staff — descendents of slaves who once belonged to the Banks family but now consider themselves part of the family by virtue of their long mutual histories — and even buy the tatty furniture for an additional $40,000. They seem too good to be true, and are: As soon as Nat signs on the dotted line, they renege and serve him with a three-day eviction notice. The Shermans get their first taste of Southern solidarity when they try to celebrate at a local bar-restaurant: The owner refuses to serve them on the grounds that they appear intoxicated. Amy and the children pack up and move to a small house nearby, but Nat rebels by going feral, moving into a cave on his former property and living on squirrel stew. When the Shermans leave to winter in Palm Springs, Nat moves back into Greenwood, setting the stage for a showdown. Squires isn't a subtle writer and the mix of crude pratfalls and highfalutin speechifying is awkward, to say the least. It's hard not to empathize with his attachment to Virginia's natural beauty and the historic resonance of places like Greenwood (played in the film by a real farm called Welbourne, whose owner apparently inspired the character of Nat), but Nat comes off as flat-out crazy and more sad than amusing or heroic, and while the Shermans are too hateful to sympathize with, the local resistance smacks of payback for the War of Northern Aggression. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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