Back in the golden age of Hollywood, a star could make a movie worth seeing even when the movie itself was a dud. James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Claudette Colbert . . . if their names were above the title, it was worth a look.
These days, however, that's not the case. Even stars you adore can't seem to save a bad movie.
Except Sean Connery.
And so it is with "Medicine Man." Put another actor in the lead role and it would probably be entirely forgettable. But Connery is well worth a look.
In "Medicine Man" he's an eccentric scientist who has been settled deep in the Amazon rain forest for so long, he has virtually become one of the Indians. In fact, he is their medicine man, having inadvertently received the title.
Wearing a pony tail and mustering up all his big-screen manly swagger (which is considerable), Connery plays a brilliant researcher who has discovered a cure for cancer — but he can't seem to duplicate his initial success.
It all hangs on a rare variety of flora that grows high in the trees, which are, of course, being cut down to pave the way for roads.
Enter Lorraine Bracco, a fellow scientist assigned to evaluate Connery's work for the pharmaceutical company that is funding him. They clash at first, but eventually come to terms, and she tries to help him come up with that winning combination once more, before they run out of rain forest.
The attempt here was apparently to make Connery and Bracco the sort of bickering romantic couple so popular in Hollywood's classic era — especially Bogie and Hepburn in "The African Queen."
But Bracco is so shrill and obnoxious, so abrasive from the first frame to the last, that whatever chemistry the filmmakers saw between her and Connery doesn't show up on the screen.
Worse, the screenplay, by Tom Schulman ("Dead Poets Society," "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids," "What About Bob?") and first-time screenwriter Sally Robinson, panders to jungle cliches, making Bracco little more than a '90s Fay Wray. And though their participation is meant to be significant, none of the Indians are developed as characters.
Still, there's Connery. And for much of the audience that may be enough.
"Medicine Man" is rated PG-13 for nudity (of the National Geographic type), a couple of profanities and some violence.