Features > Movie Reviews > Jack Goes Boating…

It’s easy to overlook a film like this: a gentle, unpretentious comedy about ordinary people connecting - and disconnecting. Probably that’s why it’s taken a year to cross the Atlantic, even though it marks the directorial debut of Academy Award-winning star Philip Seymour Hoffman. It’s not the kind of movie that will be playing multiplexes all across the country. But it’s something worth seeking out and not least for its unfashionable modesty.

Jack is one of Hoffman’s sad sack characters, a New York limo driver who is beginning to look a bit frayed and worse for wear. Well, he’s probably looked that way for a while actually, but he’s at that point in life where there could be no turning back. He’s saved from himself by the intervention of a friendly colleague, Clyde (John Ortiz), who fixes him up on a blind date with Connie (Amy Ryan), who works at a mortician’s office alongside Clyde’s wife Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega).

The date isn’t an unalloyed triumph – Connie has some emotional baggage of her own she needs to offload – but before the evening is done they’ve come to enough of an understanding that they’ve agreed to go boating together. You know, when summer comes along (it’s the dead of winter). Jack’s first challenge being, he can’t swim. Luckily Clyde volunteers to teach him…

Adapted by Robert Glaudini from his play (which Hoffman and Ortiz appeared in), Jack Goes Boating is a courtship comedy. It differs from a conventional studio movie principally in that the characters are middle aged, working class, and they’re not glamorous.

But it also differs in more subtle ways. I don’t know if the play was like this, but the film has a way of eliding information that a studio comedy would put up front and centre. Glaudini leaves us to intuit quite a bit, or pick it up as things develop.

He’s also as interested in Jack’s friendship with Clyde as he is in the romance – and in Clyde’s rocky marriage to Lucy. By helping Jack woo Lucy, Clyde becomes a more intimate friend, but it also puts more pressure on his relationship, which seems stale and insincere in comparison with the courting couple. That’s an interesting dynamic I haven’t seen explored in movies very often.

The thing plays out mostly through conversation, not action, but it doesn’t feel stagey – there are scenes in a swimming pool, for instance, that apparently were also in the play. In a way it’s analogous to a Mike Leigh film, if Leigh actually liked his characters (and not just the sentimental ones).

As a director, Hoffman doesn’t always seem sure of how to get in and out of his scenes, and occasionally his shots feel self-conscious, but mostly his style is modest and unobtrusive. As you would expect, he goes in for plenty of close ups, though not flattering ones, and his trust in the acting is everywhere rewarded: these people feel real and we soon empathize with them.

Hoffman’s hesitant, unconfident efforts to reach out of his shell, for instance, come with some unexpected grace notes like Jack’s love of reggae. While Amy Ryan’s exhortation to “overwhelm me (don’t hurt me)”, merits a song of its own. (Indie band Grizzly Bear dominates the soundtrack.)

But for me John Ortiz is the film’s discovery. Clyde is a nice guy whose generosity takes on a self-destructive edge – giving rise to some welcome third act fireworks.

This is a small movie, but a heartening one.