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Life’s a bitch, when you’re a witch – especially one which only wants to go through the usual coming of age stuff, which will hopefully not mean being ostracised by peers or shunned by the family of witches, of which you are one.
Starring Aidan Quinn, Virginia Madsen, Zosia Mamet, Sam Underwood, Olympia Dukakis
Written by Peter Hutchings, Christina Mengert
Produced by Brice Dal Farra, Claude Dal Farra, Carly Hugo, Lauren Munsch
Duration 85 minutes
How and why do actors end up in the roles that we the viewers struggle to explain the reasoning behind?
In the early ’00s, Mark Wahlberg starred in a couple of seriously ropey remakes in close succession. Nearly a decade later, Colin Farrell followed suit. Marky Mark essayed PLANET OF THE APES (2001) and THE ITALIAN JOB (2003), while Dublin’s favourite son signed on for FRIGHT NIGHT (2011) and TOTAL RECALL (2012). Were the actors making a conscious choice? Was Colin copying Mark a few years after the fact?
Furthermore, not only did each do his remakes quickly to apparently get them out of his system, but neither actor could resist taking another stab again later, with THE GAMBLER (2014) and THE BEGUILED (2017) – the equivalent to coming home from a night out having sobered up a little and then deciding it would be a good idea to crack open a can of lager from the fridge.
Meanwhile, it may have escaped the casual viewer’s attention that between 1993 and 2003, double Oscar-winner Gene Hackman featured in three John Grisham adaptations. THE FIRM, THE CHAMBER and THE RUNAWAY JURY – and that third one was his penultimate theatrically released credit before he retired to focus on writing his own novels! Was Hackman desperate to complete this dubious hat-trick, and only having done so did he feel that his work as an actor was complete?
So, now then, with THE LAST KEEPERS, we have the example of Aidan Quinn.
Back in 1998, Quinn co-starred in the film PRACTICAL MAGIC, in which Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play modern-day Massachusetts witches. Quinn serves as the love interest for the former, in what was a supporting role at best in a pretty insubstantial piece of fluff.
Then, fast forward 15 years to him signing on the dotted line for THE LAST KEEPERS, another slight tale of ‘nice’ witches living in our day and age.
So, what happened? Did 1998 represent the happiest time of Quinn’s career, and so he wanted to emulate the film he did that year? With someone like Aidan Quinn, it’s hard to pinpoint a professional highpoint. He had the looks and presence that should have made him a leading man, but his bit-of-rough to Daryl Hannah’s good girl in debut RECKLESS failed to catapult him into the mainstream. The closest he ever came to headlining something notable was BLINK, but Madeline Stowe was still the bigger star.
Alternatively, was it the actual content of PRACTICAL MAGIC that Quinn wanted to revisit? Maybe he’d been badgering his agent to keep an eye out for similar scripts ever since, and when THE LAST KEEPERS came along he snatched it right up.
We can but speculate.
What is easier to definitively judge is the quality of THE LAST KEEPERS. And that quality is... meh.
The story centres on Zosia Mamet, a teenaged social outcast with only one friend who makes herself a dress out of recycled plastic bags – and actually wears it to high school.
She lives a reclusive and idyllic countryside life with her parents (an earring-sporting Quinn and the agelessly beautiful Virginia Madsen), along with Olympia Dukakis as a salty grandma. They are a family of practicing witches who shun the outside society that doesn't accept them and their ‘traditions’.
But Zosia’s desire to spread her wings and see the outside world – i.e. go to college, date a gawky classmate or, during a rebellious phase, the local badboy – send her witchy development off in directions her family had not expected and which alarm and threaten them.
So yeah, this is one of those stories about an adolescent witch finding herself while her supernatural abilities begin to flourish. I guess being a witch is an empowerment fantasy for girls? Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Charmed, THE CRAFT ... presumably some aspect of HOCUS POCUS and/or its legacy sequel? This must be the female version of how much the boys want to hang out with creatures of the night (MONSTER SQUAD), hunt down treasure on a pirate ship (THE GOONIES) and shoot bad guys and blow shit up (LAST ACTION HERO).
THE LAST KEEPERS plods along, with plenty of talk of chosen ones and prophesies of gifts and powers and the associated responsibilities. The big theme is the needs of the individual versus those of wider society, a weighty thing to deal with at any age, but especially as a teenager, when it feels like the whole world is actually conspiring against you.
But the movie never really raises the pulse. It feels like a pilot for a TV show that wants to be the next Sabrina or Charmed. Young Zosia Mamet is a little stilted as the lead, but I'm not convinced it’s really her fault – she could have done with some of her father’s famously coarse dialogue to chew over. Her most affecting scenes end up being her heart-to-hearts with an underplaying Quinn as her sympathetic dad.
Hold on. I just figured it out. As I just alluded to, Zosia Mamet is the daughter of David Mamet, noted playwright and movie writer/director. So maybe old Aidan was hoping to get in with her and bag an intro with the old man, and thus steer his career away from having to ever appear in something like PRACTICAL MAGIC again – or, indeed, another THE LAST KEEPERS.
Two stars out of five.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? I mean, we’re assuming that the title
refers to the central witching family, but I never really got what it was they
were supposed to be the keepers of. Are they the last witches left in the
world? Or maybe just in Hudson Valley, New York?
What would a movie called THE FIRST KEEPERS be about?
I’d like to see a biopic of England goalkeeper Peter Shilton who, with
1,489, holds the global appearance record in men’s football.
Previously: THE LAST POSSE
Next time: LAST ACTION HERO
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
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