February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Playing lead in indie features and second fiddle to more established actors in studio blockbusters, the Irish soap star has parlayed his Celtic charm and manly swagger into Hollywood A-list certification. His off-screen antics fill gossip magazines across America, earning him a reputation for excess to match that of departed Hollywood reprobates Richard Harris and Oliver Reed, and burnishing his image as a man’s man.
But actors are a restless lot, and much as comedians secretly covet the gongs of their industry for mirthless performances that reveal hidden tragedian talents, it would seem that the Castleknock cowboy craves respect for showing his sensitive side. His latest film, “A Home at the End of the World?” debuts a kinder, gentler Colin Farrell, and finds the studly Dub playing a bisexual baker from Ohio.
The product of a tragic family background that left him orphaned and alone in suburbia in his teens, and the love object of his best friend and his female roommate in New York City in his 20s, Farrell’s character, Bobby Morrow, is a taciturn man-child. Emotionally stunted by the early loss of his hipster brother and parents, and by the ingestion of psychedelic drugs before he was out of short trousers, the teenage orphan Bobby (Erik Smith) is raised by his nerdy neighbors, the Glovers.
Bobby’s warmth and charm soon knocks the corners off the squares, and Mrs. Glover (Sissy Spacek) becomes a blessed-out stoner courtesy of Bobby’s generosity with his stash, and her shy son, Jonathan, to her initial consternation, becomes Bobby’s fumbling lover (she deals with this awkward business using the standard suburban mom signal for denial, like Kitty in “That ’70s Show?” by baking maniacally all night).
Bobby swaps squares for triangles when he moves from Cleveland to New York to be with Jonathan (Dallas Roberts), now openly gay, and living with a female roommate, Clare (Robin Wright Penn), who secretly loves him. Both of them find the gentle dimwit Bobby adorable — Jonathan’s teenage crush is rekindled and the baby-craving Clare flirts with the newcomer to their household. Shorn of the “Wayne’s World” wig and Spinal Tap wardrobe in which he arrives in the big city, Bobby starts to look a lot like Colin Farrell, and his roommates upgrade him to irresistible. The threesome dance around each other in intimacies of varying distance that over several years lead to the birth of a little girl, and a stint running a restaurant in upstate New York.
Despite the theater craft that director Michael Mayer brings to bear on his actors and the subtle, understated performance he elicits from the usually rambunctious Farrell, the film falls short of its claim to celebrate an unconventional household that boldly lives by its own rules. The dull pacing borders on glacier speed, exhausting our patience with the unsympathetic roommates as they seethe with unaired gripes that compel them to leave needy Bobby with no explanation at various points in the film. Jonathan, a disagreeable, narcissistic nightcrawler, and Clare, a screechy harridan in a self-inflicted haircut (a caricature of an East Village thrift shop bohemian so bad that she dresses like she picked out her outfits in the dark and makes daft hats for a living), both treat Bobby badly because they love him. You get the feeling that Bobby must be very lonesome indeed to put up with all that, and that if he was just a little brighter he’d be the one doing a runner to be with nicer boys and girls that appreciate his rugged Colin Farrellness. The infamous editing of Farrell’s full-frontal scene has given the film a notoriety that should fill the theaters, but this leaden alternative lovefest will ultimately disappoint its narrow target audience.