There might by no means be a Marlon Brando museum, but when there’s one, count on director Invoice Fishman’s gentle comedy hagiography Waltzing with Brando to be taking part in silently on a loop subsequent to the ticket sales space. Certainly, watching Waltzing with Brando with out sound is the easiest way to take pleasure in a movie that places Brando on a wave-swept pedestal when it’s not toasting his easy middle-aged cool. It can additionally spare everybody Fishman’s hacky dialogue, legend-burnishing historic tangents, lazy narration, and fourth wall-breaking explainer movies concerning the Ghyben–Herzberg lens. And, most significantly, it’ll save the world from a criminally miscast Jon Heder failing to correctly enunciate his traces, even the vital ones the place the previous Napoleon Dynamite digs deep into his soul and calls for that “we have now to discover a technique to share Earth’s valuable bounty.”
Waltzing With Brando
2
/5
- Launch Date
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September 19, 2025
- Runtime
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104 minutes
- Director
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Invoice Fishman
- Writers
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Invoice Fishman, Bernard Decide
The place the movie works fantastically is within the one factor it was most definitely to get laughably mistaken: Billy Zane (Titanic) takes what would usually be a idiot’s errand — giving full dramatic life to the often-parodied Marlon Brando — and delivers an uncanny and sensationally efficient simulacrum of the eccentric two-time Oscar-winner. Working with prosthetics designer Jerry Constantine and make-up artist Mike Mekash, Zane disappears into Brando, nailing his relaxed, but ego-inflated physique language, sly, closed-mouth smile and evenly bronzed, early Nineteen Seventies paunch. Zane is completely riveting, which solely makes it extra disappointing that the film surrounding him is so misjudged in virtually each different division.
The Intoxicating Lure of Fame and Ego
Waltzing with Brando lands close to the underside of the stack of movies about common of us who take pleasure in an prolonged brush with a celeb (assume My Week with Marilyn, The Finish of the Tour and Notting Hill). At first look, Fishman makes the intriguing alternative, focusing not on Brando’s profession however on his real-life try to construct an environmentally unimpeachable resort on his distant Tahitian island. However Fishman appears bored with crafting a Fitzcarraldo-esque story of how fame and ego can hypnotize anybody into following a celeb’s quixotic dream. His actual goal is to advertise Brando the Environmental Superhero, an effort that turns into shockingly ham-handed within the movie’s closing moments as Fishman promotes Brando’s “leading edge carbon-neutral eco-resort” and non-profit group.
To create his dream resort, Brando enlists the Los Angeles-based architect Bernie Decide. He’s performed by Heder, who conveys so little authenticity as an architect that we don’t imagine Bernie might design something that consists of greater than ten Lego blocks. Initially, Bernie is dispatched to Tahiti by a slightly emaciated Rob Corddry to discover a appropriate spot for his consumer to construct a brand new resort. That consumer is, in fact, Brando, and upon their first assembly on the island, it turns into apparent that not even the true Brando, at his Stanislavskian peak, might forge an on-screen bond with Heder. He isn’t solely too goofy a display screen presence, he is additionally saddled with a few of Fishman’s poorest scripting decisions.
A Story Full of Screenwriting Crutches
It ought to come as no shock that Fishman has just one different movie writing credit score (1988’s Tapeheads with John Cusack and Tim Robbins) and his lack of focus proves a significant stumbling block right here. At one level, Fishman pauses the story for an historic detour, full with classic images, reminding us of Brando’s connection to “his buddy Martin Luther King.” It’s the form of puffery one expects from a movie that wanted approval from the late Brando’s property, which this one didn’t. Later, the Omaha-born Brando lectures Bernie about his nation’s therapy of Native People, resulting in a recreation of Sacheen Littlefeather accepting Brando’s Oscar for The Godfather that’s so poorly finished, you surprise why Fishman didn’t simply write round it. Mixing awkwardly with all that glorification are quite a few unfunny slapstick moments, together with Bernie hanging the wrong way up from a twin-engine airplane. And his frequent fourth wall-breaking narration is a screenwriting crutch that has hardly ever felt so lazy. It is a testomony to Zane’s work that none of this devalues his efficiency; it solely makes it stand out extra.
With Hader respiration no life into his character, Bernie is relegated to a cypher whose main function is to offer Brando somebody to play in opposition to. And the movie does come alive when Zane is on-screen, permitting us to marvel at how he by no means wavers from taking part in the person, not the legend. He avoids making all the obvious decisions in taking part in such an outsized character, leaning into Brando as a contradictory determine who despised Hollywood however was not above wielding the big gravitational pull of his aura to get his method. This works particularly effectively on Bernie, who, after solely a short while on the island, sheds his inhibitions — and infrequently his garments — whereas his household principally stays in L.A. And when Brando’s ambitions for his personal island get loftier, Bernie goes together with it. First he’s roped into constructing a house on Brando’s personal island. Then he agrees to design a full-blown eco-resort to pay for it, despite the fact that there isn’t any potable water and no electrical energy. Not even Brando’s thought of utilizing elephants will make it simpler to move heavy equipment to the distant development website.
Basic Film Recreations are High Notch
The troubles with development are principally performed for gentle comedy laughs that by no means come. A lot of those troubles are monetary, attracting the eye of Brando’s supervisor, performed by an over-the-top Richard Dreyfuss. With a view to assist pay for his Tahitian dream, Brando agrees to star in The Godfather (the truth that Brando had a troublesome fame and was thought of “field workplace poison” go conspicuously unexplored). Cinematographer Garrett O’Brien does a tremendous sufficient job mimicking DP Gordon Willis’ legendary lighting on the Francis Ford Coppola basic, and later he repeats the trick in recreating the look of Final Tango in Paris, Apocalypse Now and Superman. Pretty much as good a job as O’Brien does, all of it comes off as cosplay frippery that provides nothing to the story, besides as a high-gloss reminder of Brando’s high profession moments throughout that interval.It is disappointing that Waltzing with Brando’s final purpose is to mythologize, not humanize, the actor’s environmental activism, though it’s miraculous that Zane manages to push out deeper notes of insecurity in what might have been only a trick efficiency. It turns on the market’s a purpose somebody so well-known, so sensible, and so sophisticated has hardly ever been portrayed as a significant character in a fictional movie. Oddly sufficient, Waltzing with Brando will get the onerous half proper; Zane is fabulous. “The horror… the horror…” is every part else.Waltzing with Brando, from Iconic Occasions Releasing, will debut in theaters on September 19.