Now that twenty-eight-year-old Sarah Polley has established herself as a filmmaker of some talent with the deeply affecting Away from Her, I’d love to see her apply an equal degree of discernment when it comes to taking acting gigs. Polley is incredibly smart. She obviously knows from good material. So there’s no earthly excuse for her to waste time with a mindless sap like Jaco van Dormael or a shallow leading man like Jared Leto on the film Mr. Nobody.
Leto and Dormael are actually getting together one film too late, as the once and future Jordan Catalano would’ve been ideal casting alongside Daniel Auteuil in The Eighth Day. Why Polley wants to team up with an emo frontman and a guy who deservedly hasn’t been able to get a film made since embarrassing himself with an opportunistic fable about the redeeming power of retards*, I have no idea. At least with crap like Dawn of the Dead she has the "truckload of cash" excuse; that’s actually more honorable than collaborating with this dastardly duo.
I mean, just read this paragraph from The Hollywood Reporter, and tell me this isn’t an automatic Ten Worst contender:
"Nobody is described as a multilayered love story inspired by the ‘butterfly effect,’ the chaos-theory notion that the beat of a butterfly’s wings can cause a storm thousands of miles away. Set in the not-so-distant future, the story follows Nemo Nobody (Leto) who, at 120 years old, is the last mortal surrounded by happy immortals as he relives his real and imaginary years of marriage."
Notwithstanding "Nemo Nobody"… give me a second… wow, I’m really trembling… sorry cat…, didn’t Chaos Theory immediately pass into disrepute after Jurassic Park? I’m not suggesting it was disproved; it’s just… who gives a shit anymore? This pretty much explains why Dormael hasn’t been able to secure financing for the picture. I wonder if he’s heard of Occam’s Razor.
Even if Polley’s next film is reliant on her payday from this $50 million production, I still hope the fucking thing falls apart as soon as possible. Leto is due an avalanche of bad karma after Chapter 27, while Dormael is better left to the 1990s – where he was already one of the worst "art house" directors going despite his dubious Cannes success. Everything about this movie is designed to piss me off; it’s like concentrated Batman Begins third act!
*I’m reacting to Dormael’s cynical use of an actor suffering from Down’s Syndrome to court audience sympathy. Dormael insulted the condition in two hours more than I ever could with a hurtful word.