Welcome to Mooseport
Right off the bat, "Welcome to Mooseport" strains credulity by asking us to believe Gene Hackman could play a US president leaving office as the most popular chief executive in history. Now, the actor's a national treasure and all that, but seriously -- hasn't anyone seen the man's movies? You don't go to Gene Hackman looking to entrust him with the country's well-being; you go to see charming variations on sleaziness. He's our primary exponent of the moral slide.
"Mooseport" eventually gives him something to work with, but not nearly enough: It's a disappointingly limp small-town farce played several shades too broadly by a cast that has done better work elsewhere. Hackman's character, ex-president Monroe "Eagle" Cole, retires to the small Maine burg of the title and quickly finds himself tapped by the town elders to replace the recently deceased mayor. Given his plans for speaking engagements, lucrative memoirs, and a library "bigger than Clinton's," Cole's not interested, until he gets a gander at local veterinarian Sally Mannis (Maura Tierney). He decides to run -- and so does Sally's boyfriend, town plumber Handy Harrison (Ray Romano). Cue the dirty tricks.
That's a great idea for a tart little political comedy, especially since the script by Doug Richardson and Tom Schulman immediately brings the media in to cover "the Maine Decision" and chronicle the Cole-Sally-Handy romantic triangle with sadistic glee. Occasionally "Mooseport" lets loose with a gutbuster: the mayoral debate that starts off with a round of rock-paper-scissors, or the scene in which the ex-president's rebuffed attempt to kiss Sally goodnight on her porch is replayed endlessly on national TV. With Telestrator graphics.
Under Donald Petrie's scattershot direction, such moments are depressingly few. The problems with "Mooseport" are obvious: Too many subsidiary characters with not enough funny things to say and, in Romano, a lead actor who just isn't funny at all. Making his feature film debut (voicing the woolly mammoth in "Ice Age" doesn't count), the star of "Everybody Loves Raymond" lands on the big screen like a bug on a windshield. Since Romano's a hugely successful TV comedian, he's apparently been encouraged to improvise, but the ensuing stammerings, mutterings, hemmings, and half-gargled comebacks don't qualify as dialogue in any sense of the word. You hear crickets whenever he's onscreen.
The other actors mug furiously in the vacuum, except for old pro Hackman and Tierney, who has an appealing new womanliness about her. Familiar character actors such as Wayne Robson, playing a Mooseport leader, squint their eyes and yell; as the alimony-hungry ex-first lady, Christine Baranski flicks off her two-dimensional role like lint off a shoulder-pad; poor Marcia Gay Harden is stuck in the thankless part of Cole's lovestruck mouse of an executive secretary. Rip Torn (as a battle-scarred campaign manager) and Fred Savage (as Cole's hapless PR guru) tap-dance on the fringes.
As befits a movie about a US president, though, "Welcome to Mooseport" has golf jokes, and lots of them. I'd hazard a guess the screenwriters might have even played a few holes, given how much of the running time is given over to the minutiae of a face-off match between Handy and Cole. I can safely recommend the film for anyone who thinks the word "mulligan" is a guarantee of high comedy and for couples who spend more time on the fairway than at the multiplex. For everyone else, "Mooseport" barely makes it out of the rough.
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