Peter and John, a period costume drama set in Nantucket in I827, is loosely based on a novel by the 19th Century French author Guy de Maupassant. It’s an odd time in the island’s history as the Civil War has just ended and many of the residents are now struggling financially since the whaling industry has drastically declined. The two protagonists are brothers who have totally different natures: Peter is an Army veteran and a serious minded Doctor who is now heavily in debt as he insists on treating poor patients for free and meanwhile is also bailing out John his penniless work-shy sibling.
Their fortunes are about to change when the local Attorney turns up at the family house to announce that an old friend of their parents has died and left all of his considerable fortune to John. The reason forthe surprise legacy is a mystery to the family except for the mother who suddenly rushes out of the room having a set of vapors. It gives a really big clue to us to what is going down here, which is quite a relief because up until that point, thanks to a stilted and befuddled script, the plot was as clear as mud.
The movie, full of the best intentions, is produced under a scheme run by Vermont’s Marlboro College with a partnership from non-profit film and arts company Kingdom County Productions, and deserves our unbridled support. It combines the raw talents of the filmmaking graduates of the College, who obviously imbue the project with boundless enthusiasm and a great deal of talent, with that of seasoned professionals. The end result looks and sounds beautiful and for the most part, the production values are excellent. There is however a very big BUT that over-shadows all the earnest work of the students and stops it being the excellent showcase that it should have been by rights.
The script itself makes such very little sense at times as it flits from melodrama to petty drama with such howlers coming from the actors mouths that we end up laughing out loud albeit totally inappropriately. It really is not helped in anyway that the movie contains some of the hammiest acting seen on the large screen for a very long time indeed. The cast that includes Golden Globe actress Jacqueline Bissett may have several nominations for Emmys under their belt but they will probably want to completely miss this one off their resume. They give stiff wooden performances that just painfully dragged the whole movie out making it’s 110 minutes running time seem even longer. They are not just bad, they are awful.
It takes an enormous ego for one man to be writer/director/producer and co-editor and the downside to that is they lack a crucial independent voice to stand back from the mess and help sort the woods from the trees. What Jay Craven has single-handedly created here is a veritable dense forest that needed to be hacked down, or at the very least, some very severe pruning. He is after all the College Professor for all the participating students and his over-riding motive should have been to insure that they ended up with a more watchable and creditable movie that accurately showcased the talents that he had helped them nurture. They are ill-served with mish-mash of a movie that Craven has turned it into and it will certainly not help further anyone’s careers which seems to defeat its very purpose.
Peter and John, a period costume drama set in Nantucket in I827, is loosely based on a novel by the 19th Century French author Guy de Maupassant. It’s an odd time in the island’s history as the Civil War has just ended and many of the residents are now struggling financially since the whaling industry has drastically declined. The two protagonists are brothers who have totally different natures: Peter is an Army veteran and a serious minded Doctor who is now heavily in debt as he insists on treating poor patients for free and meanwhile is also bailing out John his penniless work-shy sibling.
