Powder Blue: The Jessica Biel Stripper Movie

How does a movie starring Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, Jessica Biel, Lisa Kudrow, Patrick Swayze and Ray Liotta go straight to DVD?

That is apparently the case for “Powder Blue,” which hits the DVD shelves May 26th, roughly 20 months after filming wrapped and without ever seeing a legit theatrical release.  So what happened?  All we really have in way of explanation is the film itself.

“Powder Blue” weaves a web of several loosely connected storylines in the same style as “Crash” or “Magnolia.”  The holidays draw near, and four LA residents close in on personal crises as well.  Rose Johnny (Biel) strips to pay the medical bills of her comatose 7 year old son.  She also appears to have a coke problem, though to what extent remains unclear.  Somewhere across town, Charlie (Whitaker) offers strangers $50,000 cash to shoot him “in the heart.”  He’s desperate and in pain but, as the film quickly explains, is a religious man and can’t risk killing himself for fear of eternal hellfire.  Elsewhere, scrawny Qwerty Doolittle (Eddie Redmayne) receives a rejection on his loan as his father ran up some bad debt for their mortuary business.  He’s never had a real girlfriend, and when he attempts to attend a dating function, he passes out from nerves.  Jack Doheny (Liotta) is an ex-con dying of cancer. Allegedly, he’s “just passing through” town, though we know right away that something more is going on.

TV Casualties Rating:

Run Time: 106 minutes

Directed by: Timothy Linh Bui

Written by: Timothy Linh Bui

Starring: Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Lisa Kudrow

Theatrical Release: 05/08/09

DVD Release: 05/26/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

This ambitious setup shows some promise.  Early on, a spark of energy catapults the action as the film jumps back and forth to the different strands of story.  At spots where the movie leans toward quirky rather than intense, it actually works really well.  Lisa Kudrow was especially funny as a neurotic waitress.  As the bigger picture comes into focus, and the direction of each story fully takes shape, unfortunately, that energy seems to drain away in a hurry – the spark extinguished by cold, blue snow.

“Powder Blue” doesn’t have deep enough characters to work as a character study, and it similarly fails to deliver a twisty or surprising enough plot to carry the film. There are unintentionally laughable lines of dialogue at crucial moments, and similar missteps of tone throughout the last half of the movie – some of the love scenes come off awkwardly, and some of the over the top “sad scenes” with swelling music seem to misjudge (by a lot) how connected (or not) the audience feels to certain characters and their predicaments.  There didn’t seem to be a clear storytelling vision behind this.  Despite the openly derivative elements, it doesn’t manipulate as well as “Crash” or give us the cast of rich characters like “Magnolia.”  It failed to rip off either one all that well.

The gravest sin?  The tragic elements here, like Rose’s drug problem and Charlie’s suicidal tendencies, while intriguing at first, stay on a very surface level.  The pain here is flat, superficial – a  mere plot device.  It doesn’t resonate.  I feel like writer/director Timothy Linh Bui couldn’t decide if he wanted the movie to be clever or pack an emotional haymaker, and as a result it does neither, ultimately trying to force each storyline into paying off with a sentimental cheesefest.

Oh well.  Years from now “Powder Blue” will simply be remembered as the “Jessica Biel stripper movie,” if it’s remembered at all.  She does splash hot candle wax all over her boobs… in case you were wondering.  That actually does sound like a lot of straight to DVD movies, now that I think about it.