Candy Caine
Writer-director Charles Shyer’s Alfie is less a remake of the misogynistic 1966 film that made Michael Caine a star than it is a cotton-candy retooling. A better title would have been Halfie; it lacks most of what made the original so ugly even as it primped for a night on the town.
Shyer offers a sanitized version of Bill Naughton’s work, with Jude Law as the cad about town who drives limousines and sports modaiolo togs tonier than anything his clients wear. This Alfie is Caine given a metrosexual makeover and dropped into modern-day Manhattan.
Shyer, maker (with ex-wife Nancy Meyers) of the Father of the Bride and The Parent Trap do-overs, exhorts us to root for Law, but the pretty boy on the Vespa is already his own best cheerleader. Speaking directly to the audience, a device from the stage production, Law suggests a glib self-awareness Caine never possessed, and he needs no real comeuppance. He’s merely an irresponsible child who refuses to grow up, Peter Pan with a bothersome hard-on.
When first we see Alfie, he’s shagging a married woman (Jane Krakowski) in the back of his limousine, the same scene that opens the original. Then it’s off to the apartment of girlfriend Julie (Marisa Tomei), who lives with her young son. Here you notice the alterations Shyer and co-writer Elaine Pope have made: Tomei’s character in the original actually bears Alfie’s son, whom he has no trouble abandoning despite proclaiming his love for the boy. This kid is a prop Alfie can pick up and kiss and leave without alienating the audience when he walks out the door and heads for some other woman’s bed.
In the least defensible change, when Law’s Alfie impregnates his best friend’s ex-girlfriend (Nia Long) and is forced to drive her to an abortion clinic, the event occurs at the film’s beginning rather than at its end. This expedites Alfie’s downfall and sets up his move toward self-reflection, but it also enfeebles what in the original was a grim scene with Denholm Elliott as a self-loathing abortionist. The event causes Alfie to lose his best friend (Omar Epps), but in the original, it also cost Alfie a piece of his soul.
Director Lewis Gilbert’s version, with its peppy Burt Bacharach score, was a dark movie acting light on its feet; it only pretended to have a good time as it rode a downward spiral. This new version, which retains nearly every character and echoes most of the original’s scenes, is a slight, breezy incarnation that tries like hell to dishearten, which only makes it disingenuous.
But Shyer and Pope, who spike their Manhattan with a dash of mod London, face a no-win situation: Audiences won’t tolerate such a loathsome lead, nor can they stomach a queue of women willing to be smitten and smote by a limey in Prada. By populating their movie with strong women (including Susan Sarandon as the rich older lady with a penchant for young men) equally drawn to the impish cad and repulsed by him, Shyer has blithely awarded his movie the heart Naughton and Gilbert felt their Alfie had to earn.
