Section B·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Friday, November 3, 2000
Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet
Robert Redford's golfing fairy tale, The Legend of Bagger Vance, is classy, dignified, eminently big-hearted. It's also simple-minded to the point of banality.
Bagger Vance pretty but boring
The Associated Press
Even so, it's hard to resist falling in step with the onscreen onlookers who crowd the links to follow a washed-up golfer as he tries to exorcise his demons and reclaim the promise his life once held.
Matt Damon stars as Rannulph Junuh, the coulda-been pro golfer who dutifully goes off to the trenches in World War I. Traumatized after his entire company is killed, Rannulph vanishes for 10 years, leaving behind his golf career and fiancee Adele Invergordon (Charlize Theron).
Jack Lemmon delivers an engaging cameo as the elderly Hardy and provides genteel voice-overs that nudge the story along.
The story unfolds through the eyes of young Hardy Greaves (newcomer J. Michael Moncrief), a boy who signs on as Rannulph's deputy caddy and whose life becomes indelibly imprinted by the hopefulness Bagger preaches.
So begins Rannulph's resurrection under the tutelage of a mysterious caddy named Bagger Vance (Will Smith), who appears out of the night to spout Zen pat-phrases intended to put the zing back in Rannulph's swing — and his life.
*Bagger Vance*, on the other hand, is goodness and mercy incarnate. It's tempting to characterize *Bagger Vance* as a throwback to a simpler era of moviemaking, but Hollywood has rarely been this simple, this benign.
Conveniently, he returns home just as Adele is looking for ways to hang on to the lavish golf resort her father opened as the Depression hit. Adele convinces two top golfers (Bruce McGill and Joel Gretsch) to compete at her place, but the city fathers insist that a local boy must join the big golf exhibition.
No villains, just a man and his own phantoms, surrounded by a decent lot of folks — friends, strangers, even competitors — cheering him on.
Director Redford's characters and Depression-era Southern settings are so richly and lovingly crafted that they largely compensate for the movie's New Age motivational babble and the shallow artifice of its story.
It's a metaphor we'd all like to live.
Crossword
ACROSS
1 Beseech
4 Blank
7 Influences
Lennon's love
15 been had!
Pause in conversation
United
Siblys
20 Stephen Foster song, "Oh! "
22 Invites
Small crown
Put and forget?
Edge
Less cordial
Tango team
Stood up
Military truce
Ulster or Roach
Pouting grimace
Woods on the links
Nullify
Anthropology focus
Plant new seeds
Paints a word picture
Quaint
Lot
Wash. neighbor
Thin paper
Painter's base
Cain's brother
Four-time U.S. Open golf season
Fourth batting position
Boring routine
Fertilizer fish
Light before
Ruckus
Sawbuck
Flowed
Puppy bark
$ \textcircled{c} $ 2000 Tribune Media Services, Inc All rights reserved.
DOWN
1 Push upward
2 Utter boredom
3 Circumvents
4 Identity
incorrectly
5 Makeup marke
6 Clay fashioners
11/2/00
7 Sure shot
8 Much removed
9 Charge
10 Test paper
11 Use swear words, casually
12 Difficult journey
13 Talk back
14 Wrigley nine
15 Come up
16 Type of steamboat
17 Laschvious gander
18 Type of display
19 "Elegy Written in a Country" Churchyard" poet
20 Farm wagon
21 Early car maker
22 Bullets, for short
23 Highway
24 Earl Grey and hyson
25 Part of DVD
26 Slugger's cheer
27 Become startled
46 Annual melts
48    Arabia
49 Where the victor comes out
50 Jazz style
51 Model
52 Macpherson
52 Young adult
54 Scotia
56 Tuck's partner?
57 Sci-fi craft
58 Classroom favorite
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