Movie review: 'The Mysteries of Pittsburgh'

Peter Sarsgaard (Credit: Bruce Birmelin/Groundswell )

1 1/2 stars (out of four)

 Based on novelist Michael Chabon’s  1988 debut effort, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” is a coming-of-ager that nearly slaughters you by minute 30 with the relentlessness of its protagonist’s voiceovers, as scripted—with reverence and without cinematic wiles—by director Rawson Marshall Thurber  (“Dodgeball”).

 “I just wanted to go outside and get some fresh air,” we hear as young Art Bechstein (Jon Foster) is about to lay eyes on the willowy blond at a party played by Sienna Miller. Then, needlessly: “And that’s when it happened.” Or this, later: “Suddenly my mind went blank.” Pause. “All mental activity ceased.” What works well enough on the page, comically or otherwise, sounds like a mistake on screen.

In the summer of 1983 Pittsburgh, as if on a three-month “Stingo Scholarship” funded by the fans of “Sophie’s Choice,” Art, son of a mobster money launderer (Nick Nolte), falls in with Jane  (Miller ) and her reckless, Nathan-lite lover, Cleveland  (Peter Sarsgaard ). The triangle shifts and complicates; the voiceover narration never shuts up; and the movie may be slick, and acted with some conviction, but it is a fake.

I know I keep hocking “Adventureland,” the other ’80s Pittsburgh-set coming-of-ager now in theaters, but see that one. This one landed with a thud over a year ago at the Sundance Film Festival, and while plenty of films generate minimal buzz at major festivals and then turn up in your town and turn out to be far better than their reputations, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” is not like that.

mjphillips@tribune.com

Add a comment