A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004)

Originally Reviewed

Saturday June 3, 2006

At first I didn't even want to bother wasting the time to write a review for this film but I might as well take this opportunity to rant, I've earned that. I had never heard of this film before and no wonder, it made $121,476 in the box office, which means about 13,500 people actually went to see this film.  I'm hoping it was an independent release, if not then those numbers are really bad, if it was an independent film then that's simply another reason why I probably didn't like it.

Pursy Will (Scarlett Johansson) returns to New Orleans after hearing of the death of her mother. She stops by her mothers old house now believing it to belong solely to her; she had been told her mother was going to fix it up for her and leave it to her when she had died. All Pursy finds is a dilapidated old house and a couple of guys who have wasted away their lives, Bobby Long and Lawson Pines. Bobby Long (John Travolta) used to be a professor, Lawson his assistant.  The only thing they do is quote literature, smoke, drink themselves into an early grave and curse; how that's a recipe for a good film I'll never understand.

The two of them refuse to leave the house claiming Pursy's mother each left them a third, when in all actuality she did leave the house to Pursy and it was rightly hers, only it would be in one year. Pursy decides she isn't going to leave so they'll make each others life’s a living hell until someone finally does. Throughout the film Pursy discovers the truth about her mother, what happened to Bobby Long and Lawson to lead them to this sad state and the identity of the father whom she never knew.

I have watched many a Scarlett Johansson films, in an attempt to grasp some reason for her popularity.  Sure there is no doubt that she is gorgeous and I will admit she does have some talent, even though her demeanor is almost exactly the same in every film. But other than The Island, which was action packed cornball fun, the rest of her films have been more boring than a stick in the mud. How she manages to pick these films I will never know, although I must say they do fit with what seems to be a horribly boring personality so maybe that’s why. In terms of John Travolta I've learned to not expect much of anything from him anymore as his career has ventured down the same dead end highway as his Face Off buddy Nicolas Cage, and while his portrayal of Bobby Long was comedic on rare occasions for the most part I thought he acted more like a special ed kid than former professor.

In the end, A Love Song for Bobby Long bored me to tears, the story wasn't interesting, it dragged on, and if they weren't drinking they were cussing, which continue for so long that I had to fast forward through a lot to end the misery and find out what all these "secrets" were.  And these secrets definitely aren't worth sitting through this sorry excuse of a film and ended up being pretty predictable especially who Pursy's father is. So I chalk this film up to another boring Johansson film that everyone one saw (non critics) seemed to love and I seem to hate, oddly enough the critics didn't like it either.  Watch the trailer, and that alone should put you asleep.

2/10