Sunday, April 30, 2000

Lowe lip-syncs his way into ‘John Denver Story’

Things can’t be good around the Swank-Lowe household these days. Hilary Swank basks in Oscar’s glow as Best Actress winner for ``Boys Don’t Cry.'' She’s doing magazine covers and thumbing scripts for new mega-deals. And hubby Chad Lowe, a B-list actor last seen weeping in the Shrine Auditorium as his wife thanked her publicists, but not him, has one more reason to cry.
  Bless his heart, Chad’s career reaches a new low tonight as he’s reduced to donning goofy hornrims and a collection of ill-fitting wigs to lip-sync folk-rock drivel in ``Take Me Home: The John Denver Story,'' airing at 8 p.m. on CBS.
  Take him home? He should have stayed home.
  Poor Chad. Before becoming famous as the elbow in Hilary’s paparazzi shots, he was known as Brat Packer Rob’s little brother.
  This season while Rob starred in the NBC hit ``The West Wing,'' Chad was part of the ``who’s he again?'' level of characters on CBS’ ``Now and Again.'' Last season he was a recurring figure who made no big impression on ``ER.''
  At network press gatherings in Los Angeles, he is the guy most often mistaken for Shaun Cassidy.
  Nice guy. Just not high on the stardom meter.
  And now he’s miming ``Rocky Mountain High'' in one of the worst TV-movies of this or any year.
  As television bio-pics go, this is one of those impossibly idealized ones, so full of sunshine on their shoulders and godawful syrupy dialogue that it threatens diabetic conditions.
  Plot synopsis: At 21, John Denver (Lowe) quits college and moves to L.A. to be a folksinger, much to the displeasure of his hippie-hating Air Force pilot dad (Gerald McRaney in uniform). At a college concert, young Denver lays myopic eyes on Annie (Kristin Davis on leave from HBO’s ``Sex & the City''), who will be the love of his life and about whom he will sing in a popular song long after he’s married to another woman and another after that.
  Denver’s harmless folk music makes him rich and they move to a log palace in Aspen. For this chapter of Denver’s life, they’ve slapped a shaggy pageboy wig on Chad Lowe, along with a sheepskin vest, a huge leather hat and shiny wirerims.
  He says ``far out'' and ``wow'' ninety-jillion times.
  ``How do you say ‘far out’ in French, Annie?'' he asks his wife.
  The Denvers start fighting because John is so doggone successful.
  ``You’re making albums! You’re making movies! What about meeeeee?'' whines Annie, not content to be fabulously wealthy.
  In one scene, Denver’s seen warbling ``You fill up my senses/like a night in the forest'' while Annie goes mommie dearest with some groceries in their log kitchen.
  During these songs, Chad Lowe’s lips form the words of familiar oldies as Denver’s real voice comes out of the speakers on the TV.
  Oh, god. It’s weird.
  Later in the movie Denver goes berserk because Annie loses her senses and chops down a big hunk of their forest.
  ``You knew I loved those trees!'' he bawls, conveniently forgetting the thousands of pines that didn’t exactly surrender voluntarily to become his giant log house.
  You can almost see the trees start to cry, not from the chainsaw but from Lowe’s wooden acting.
  Later still, Lowe weeps like he did on Oscar night when he has to kiss McRaney as Denver’s dead dad, who even in repose looks ashamed of his wussy, longhaired son. Right after that, Denver wacks out and does a chainsaw massacre on the log mansion.
  It’s so sad. And really, really creepy. Lowe’s having to be in this thing, not just Denver’s life.
  The singer’s life didn’t get sad and creepy till the end. His career fizzled. He got depressed. He had a bad car wreck. And not long after performing in Corpus Christi in 1997, the small plane he was piloting nosedived off the California coast and he was killed.
  The movie plays out this scene with Lowe staring out of the cockpit into the sunset and saying, ``Far out.''
  He’s wearing a wig that makes him look just like Ellen DeGeneres.
  
  Also this week