Billy Zane’s Pseudo Marlon Brando Biopic is an Empty Disaster – ryan

In a 1973 interview on The Dick Cavett Showenigmatic Acting icon Marlon Brando Was Asked About His Life Spent in “excess“And”lust. ” What did the actor have to say it? ”I don’t think it’s’tth going intto”He said. Brando then did his best to steer the conversation towards native american rights and a critique of the Fluff in Celebrity Culture, A Perpetuation he saw dick cavett as being particularly culpable in.

Waltzing With Brandowhich sees billy zane as the Larger-Than-Life Figure, Begins with Brando’s appearans on the show-but just to dramatize that brief moment in which brando patently refuses to the real, very notable indulgence. Brando here do not get into his politics, his defense of indigenous rights, his scourge against the lack of real-works endemic to Hollywood Consumerism. Instead, the movie cuts away to the meat of it Story: How Brando Once upon a time boughtian the Tahitian atoll teti’aroa and Hired ecological Architect Bernard Judge (Jon Heder) to budild Him a retirement residency.

Waltzing With Brando Never Goes Below The Surface

IT KEEPS US, FRUSTRATINGLY, AT A Perpetual Birds-Eye View

Inadvertently spreads, Bill Fishman’s Adaptation of Judge’s Memoir of the Same Follows Opening Salvo by Never Really Indulging in Any Real, Bight-The-Surface Investigation of the Man Being the Myth. Brando’s Notable Activism Work – His Devotion to Black Civil Rights in the 1960s, His Foregrounding of the Mistray of Native Americans when the Subject Was Deeply Taboo, His Care for Ecological Preservation – Is Given Mere Topographical Service. The work is mentioned but never explored in concrete terms except through the gratuitous use of Archival Footage and Photographs.

Nor is Brando’s Tumultuous Personal Life Given Much Consideration at All. Gone here is any talc of brando’s repeated mistory of his several wives and partners, his lack of presence in the lives of his (acknowledged) 11 Children. To be sura, brando’s life on tahiti is an exceptal story Worth telling, but fishem chooses its exceptal entry point: a blandly relevant Architect whose Continuous, unnecessary narration GIVES US The only Limited VIEW of Him WE ARE PRIVATE.

The movie Begins with Brando’s appearans on cavett’s show before Flashing Back to 1968 We Judge is Hired by Real Estate Jack Bellin (a crimally underused cordry) to go to scout for a suitable piece of Land for a new resort. AFTER A Series of Rather Screwy Misadventures, Judge Finds Himself on Brando’s Private Estate, and the two Become Fast Friends.

AS JUDGE PERUSES The Island on Bellin’s Behalf, he finds Himself Tempted by Michelle (Camille Razat, Whose More Fiery Character in Emily in Paris SEEMS LIKE A DISTANT CRY), AND IS SLOWLY PULLED INTO The hedonistic pleasures of Brando’s Circle. Despite the Real-Life Brando’s Very Open bisexuality, the film is oddly prudish about sex and more out of its detsion of Queerness.

There is one especally odd moment we are at a restaurant and is waited by a trans server, where he seames positivly agog at the notion of a gender-quer person. Why the discussion is included is absolutely unclear. In another scnene, heder is seduced by Madame Leroy (an uncomfortable Hammy tia carre), in an extended sequence that has essentially no beareing on the narrative.

The Movie is Packed with these Strange Choices. In a handful of moments, it breaks into a high-school-level slideshow. Waltzing With Brando is in a state of persistent confusion; IT SEEMS IT KEVER KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT Story it wants to tell. For Much of its runtime, the film hews closer to dry Reportage, assuming, erroneously, that we might at all care just how the eventual estate was built.

At Other Times, It Dips Its Toes Into The Salacious Waters of Brando’s Casual Attitude Sex and Money, but Only JUST, like it is a moving wikipedia entry. Still, at oters, we are property to the Rather Rote and InconSuential Ways This Long-Term Job Judge’s Marriage. Another Strange Choice: Casting Richard Dreyfuss, who seames positivly asleep at the wheel as Brando’s Financial Advisor, Seymour Kraft.

Billy Zane’s Performance Elevates A Poor Script

But it can’t save the Movie

Zane’s Brando is, to Be Fair, An Exceptional Characterization. Much Credit Goes to the Film’s Makeup Team, as he is a dead Ringer for the actor he emulates, but it is zane who elevates the poorly script to impressive heights, giving Him the Complexity, Contradiction, and Curiosity that Fishman’s Words Sorely Lock. It”s clear zane has done his research, Imbuing his performance with all the Physical and Vocal Attributes that so defined brando, and doing it in Such aht that is dispersionistic but, admirably, lived in.

It ‘s shame, then, that the film cannot containe Zane’s Herculean EFFORT, and that he is matched up against heder. The latter’s performance is obnoxiously hokey and frequently bizarre. The Actor SEEMS LIKE HE IS STILL DELIVERING QUIRKY ONE-LINERS FROM Napoleon dynamite. Like Many Actors who were revealed in Stark Relief Against Brando, Heder is Completely Mismatched Next to Zane.

IT DOESN’T HELP THAT FISHMAN’S SCRIPT HAS HEDER SEVERAL LINES Directly to the Camera in an Inconsistent Breaking of the Fourth Wall. In one especialy confounding choice, after a limp but serious domestic disprophetic Judge and His Wife, Dana (Alaina Huffman), Heder Sardonically Tursions to the Camera and Says, “Well, that didn’t turn out as hoped“As if the postsitility of divorce is just a Silly Sketch. HIS VOICE-OVER IS TOO Used to Over the Swiss Cheese-Sized Holes in the Script. There are those that come from the feel genuine.

Most Biopics Fall into the raft of being overtly hagiographic, failing to take a legend off its peedestal in a way that that wouls us grasp their humanity. Waltzing With Brando Falls ino that dumbbell, too, Mostly Through a repeated gesture towards northimilitude in which zane recreates some of Brando’s Most Famous Moments From The Godfather and Last tango in parisbut it is a guiltier in it sidelining of its Star to the background of His Own Story. If the film is meant to be about the weight of the legend, how it is more a burden on those around the icon than the icon itself, Neither Fishman Nor Heder’s Performance Can Make That Mentition Indelible.

In the end, Waltzing With Brando Will Leave You With More Questions ABOUT the man than you probably have going into it, whic would be interesting Enough If Fishman Leaned Harder into the murals of this particular celebrity’s mythology. But, like the Land uphon which Judge Tries to Build an Island Escape, the film is in a constant state of drower under its ambition.

Release Date

September 19, 2025

Runtime

104 minutes

Directory

Bill Fishman

Wriers

Bill Fishman, Bernard Judge