Film reviews: Roofman and Kiss of the Spider Woman

Roofman

Directed by Derek Cianfrance (R)

★★★

“This is a rom-com with a big but,” said Steve Pond in The Wrap. In Roofman, Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst play 40-something single parents who fall in love. But...Tatum’s character is based on a real-life military veteran who robbed 45 McDonald’s restaurants and met Dunst’s salesclerk while he was living inside a Toys R Us after escaping prison. Because he appears doomed to soon end up back behind bars, Roofman comes across as “the saddest romantic comedy ever, or maybe the most lighthearted tragedy,” with the charming Tatum somehow making Jeffrey Manchester, his model, appear merely a little misguided.

In a “more textured” movie, Manchester would have been less purely likable, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. But Roofman, so named because Manchester robbed the fast-food joints after slipping in through the roof, is an action drama that’s “eager to please,” and “it works mostly because of Tatum and Dunst.”

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Still, director Derek Cianfrance, who made the cutting drama Blue Valentine, establishes a delicate tone here that “makes room for lightness, comedy, romance, and quietly searing melancholy,” said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter. The film “never tries to justify Jeff’s criminality” but effectively touches on the reasons he may have chosen the wrong path, and it’s “such a heartfelt movie that it’s both funny and affecting. Just give in to it.”

Kiss of the Spider Woman

Directed by Bill Condon (R)

★★

“It is rare for a famous singer who also acts to avoid doing a movie musical for as long as Jennifer Lopez has,” said Richard Lawson in Vanity Fair. In this new film, based on the stage musical adaption of Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel, Lopez fills the role of a long-gone movie queen, “and she attacks it with starry gusto.”

Unfortunately, the source material is “an odd mélange,” and director Bill Condon “has trouble with the story’s crucial juxtaposition”: the grim reality of two prisoners’ daily life in juntaruled Argentina and the glamorous movie world that one of the men recalls with relish as a means of brief escape. That prisoner, played by the actor Tonatiuh, moves like a woman, while his cellmate (Diego Luna) is a macho insurgent.

Yet “Condon is shrewd not to overexplain the pair’s relationship,” said Peter Debruge in Variety. Though the Dreamgirls director is restrained here, he remains “a wizard with actors,” and he lets Tonatiuh shine in the role that William Hurt won an Oscar for in 1986.

“The phrase ‘a star is born’ has been overused, but it’s hard not to think of those words when watching Tonatiuh,” said Bilge Ebiri in NYMag.com. “If only the rest of the picture could match his vitality.” For a movie this ambitious to succeed, “one frankly needs a director with a lot more imagination.”