Carolina

Review by: Elizabeth Brady
ElizabethBrady@TheCinemaSource.com

Carolina casts two favorite actresses of many, Julia Stiles and Shirley MacLaine, as grandmother and granddaughter amongst a very eccentric family. However, while it has many funny, touching, and entertaining parts, the film as a whole is nothing exceptional, and loses many points for utilizing many cliché and recycled characters, plot twists, and relationships.

The plot centers around Stiles’ character (Carolina) and her struggle to succeed in a professional and romantic realm, juxtaposed with her bizarre family and upbringing. In uniform fashion for Stiles, she plays an intelligent, sarcastic, but genuine young woman (haven’t we seen this many times before, say, in 1999’s 10 Things I Hate About You, for instance?). Randy Quaid is her alcoholic father (hmmm…. Does his role in Independence Day ring a bell?), and Shirley MacLaine is her foul-mouthed, wild grandma. All of the roles are pretty second-hand and uncreative.

Another additional disappointment in Carolina is the poor standard of humor in the film. While there are certainly a few hilarious and subtle moments (i.e. Alan Thicke - remember him from Growing Pains - doing a cameo as a dating gameshow host!), a disproportionate amount of the jokes in the film are just simply not funny, punch lines aren’t present or are just so weak that you can’t notice them. Also, many of the archetypal “funny” characters (in particular, Shirley MacLaine’s character of Millie Mirabeau) become repetitive, obnoxious, and irritating. While it initially may bring some laughs, how many times does the audience truly want to hear MacLaine drop lines like “Your titties aren’t gonna stay perky forever, ya know,”? It simply gets irksome and redundant, with MacLaine on board they should have tried harder to make the humor more intelligent, and less aimed at a 14 year-old audience.

Actually, the Mirabeau family themselves are an overused and slightly unbelievable butt of far too many ineffective jokes in Carolina. They are an inexplicable blend of bikers, alcoholics, single mothers, prostitutes, rednecks, and quasi-homeless drug addicts. I guess it’s funny for about 2 minutes, but it gets old fast, and the director doesn’t seem to notice it. It actually gets to a point several times that the viewer doesn’t even care any more if Carolina comes to terms with her family. After all, who really wants to be associated with people who smoke and drink while they’re pregnant, run whore-houses and are in jail 60% of the time? The Mirabeau family structure needs to be developed more on film for it to be believable and understandable as a major plot in the movie.

The romantic comedy side of the film is also pretty damn predictable. For example, the love triangle scenario in which guy- loves-girl-who-loves-other-guy-who-doesn’t-love-her couldn’t be more overused in modern cinema. Also, the whole theme of Carolina learning to come to terms with the rest of the out-of-control Mirabeau family is pretty generic. For the most part, the story is amazingly predictable.

Still, even with all the criticisms that Carolina generates, ...