“Magnolia” film review, The Daily Cardinal, January 2000

Magnolia is another Hollywood film parading a band of flawed characters who nonetheless emerge as absorbing and (somewhat) sympathetic. A nimbly rendered ensemble piece whose principles are connected, at times ambiguously, by chance, circumstance, tenuous familial associations, rapid cross-cut editing and a conspicuous soundtrack of Aimee Mann songs, Magnolia uses its three-hour running time to powerful effect.

Most of the characters in writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson’s ponderous yarn don’t seem prepared for what they are getting themselves into.

A nurse (Phil Parma) satisfies the deathbed request of an elderly home-care cancer patient (Jason Robards) to see his estranged son (Tom Cruise). But in so doing he misjudges the tangled skeletons the reunion ousts from the family closet. That same estranged son, a monstrous self-help evangelist preaching the doctrine of misogyny, submits to a television interview only to have agonizing childhood memories revisited.

A child genius (Jeremy Blackman) is poised to break the all-time money record on television’s longest-running (absurdly fictional) game show. Only he wets his pants and invites the antagonism of his bullying father (Michael Bowen) and the show’s crusty host (Philip Baker Hall). That same host is the object of his wife’s (Melinda Dillon) devotion until he is diagnosed with cancer and reveals his adulterous past, prompting her to ask one question. The answer, pertaining to their daughter (Melora Walters), horrifies her. That same daughter attracts the attention of an inept cop (John C. Reilly) as both officer investigating a noise complaint and suitor. He takes her out and barely withstands the near-delirious pleas of a brittle coke addict. And so on.

Magnolia is a film without a happy ending but which nevertheless closes with a smile. And leaving the theater, a (re)viewer would be relieved to discover only snow falling from the sky.

© 2000
Stephen Andrew Miles