REVIEW
Moore by the glow
By Burl Burlingame
of the moon
Star-Bulletin
This isn't fair. Joe Moore enters our homes two or three times a night, talks at us for a half hour each time and then leaves. We see more of Joe Moore than we do our parents. As a wildly popular news anchor in Hawaii, familiarity breeds contentment.
But Moore is also a serious actor and playwright, with a weakness for works with big ideas and grand themes. Stuff that Means Something.
At least he isn't blowing his gazillion-dollar anchor dough on trophy wives and gold-plated disposables. Nope. Moore puts his money where his mouth is, and we mean that literally this time - Moore is not only the star of the film "Moonglow," he discovered the original property (a story called "Mind If I Join You" by Jonathan Daly) and executive-produced the work.
"Moonglow" premiered last night before an appreciative audience at the Hawaii Theatre Center, part of the Hawaii International Film Festival.
And so the crucial question -- how was Moore?
Moore is just fine in his part; in fact, Moore is less Moorey than ever. It's a creditable screen performance. That crackling stolidity has given way to something more vulnerable and open.
But he has a tremendous handicap here.
Moore is onscreen for 95 percent of "Moonglow" interacting with veteran character actor Milo O'Shea, and not even Lassie twirling plates on sticks and bow-wowing to a boogie-woogie beat could upstage the compulsively watchable O'Shea. Sorry. Can't be done. The fact that Moore generally holds his own with O'Shea is a feat altogether unexpected and pleasurable.
Moonglow:
The film covers an apparently endless evening in the fragmenting life of Matthew, a "convenience" designer played by Moore. Middle-aged and besotted with ennui, Matthew flees his niece's wedding party and heads for some fishing cabins at Lost Lake, where his long-ago honeymoon with wife Ginny (a luminous Joanna Cassidy) is written large upon his heart.Matthew is having mid-life crazies, the nature of which isn't exactly clear, but it's obvious that he means to check into a fishing cabin and not check out. Proprietor Pete (O'Shea), a garrulous old so-and-so, senses this and latches onto Matthew, becoming his tag-along conscience.
Matthew and Pete dueling over life's little mysteries. Things get more bizarre as the evening progresses, to the point where we're not quite certain if Matthew is hallucinating or whether Pete just happens to be a angel in a fishing vest.
Given the largely verbal nature of the "action," plus the evening setting, plus the single location, Dennis Christianson's directing mojo ensures "Moonglow" doesn't become claustrophobic. It verges on being play-like. Though the night lighting is quite effective, some of the visual subtlety will be lost on the smaller screen of cable television, where this film will have its best legs.
Eileen Brennan has some brief, effective cameos as a crackpot, not exactly a stretch. Besides the fab-looking Cassidy, Ione Skye as the niece and Amy Hanaiali'i Gilliom as a wedding singer have bright parts. None, however, put out the kind of heat local actress Elissa Dulce did in "Goodbye Paradise," Moore and Christianson's first film collaboration.
Even though "Moonglow" was entirely filmed in Hawaii, the setting is Anywhere, USA. Tech credits are first-class. As entertainment, "Moonglow" is solid, sentimental, sturdy and to-the-point, which pretty much describes Moore as well. It ain't glamorous, but when was the last time you saw any movie in which middle-aged people had real lives?
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