Susan Granger’s review of “Papa: Hemingway in Cuba” (Yari Film Group)
Since Ernest Hemingway is my favorite novelist and this is the first Hollywood movie to be filmed in his beloved Cuba since the 1959 revolution, I had high hopes. Unfortunately, they were dashed almost from the getgo.
Supposedly based on a true story, it’s about the friendship that develops after Ed Myers (Giovanni Ribisi), a young, idealistic Miami Herald reporter wrote a fan letter to Hemingway in the late 1950s.
“I got your letter,” Hemingway gruffly replied by phone, adding, “It’s a good letter. You like to fish?”
So that’s how Myers eagerly arrived at Finca Vigia (“lookout house”), the hacienda just outside of Havana belonging to Hemingway (Adrien Sparks) and his fourth wife, Mary (Joely Richardson), who share a penchant for nude swimming.
“This is how God made me” is the explanation.
Gamely bar-hopping around the island, Myers learns about life, love and literature – along with brewing political unrest, as Castro-led rebels battle government forces, while Papa’s suspected of gunrunning.
“They only value we have as human beings is the risks we’re willing to take,” Papa intones.
Autobiographically written by Denne Bart Petitclerc, who died in 2006, it’s filled with exposition and unconvincingly directed by producer Bob Yari (“Crash”), who was able to capture Finca Vigia (now a museum), along with other authentic Cuban vistas, including Hemingway’s fishing boat, the Pilar, under the aegis of the Cuban Film Institute.
While Adrian Sparks physically resembles then-59 year-old Hemingway, he’s never convincing as the charismatic, if quixotic adventurer whose reckless exploits ignited novels like “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” “A Movable Feast” and “”The Old Man and the Sea.”
As the journalist juggling a relationship with his co-worker/girlfriend (Minka Kelly), Giovani Ribisi grows increasingly disillusioned by Hemingway’s depression, drunken rages, self-loathing and abusive behavior. While Joely Richardson does a wicked Marlene Dietrich imitation, she’s not believable, either.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Papa: Hemingway in Cuba” is an uneven, tedious 3. Too bad the filmmakers didn’t heed Hemingway’s dictum about “the power of less.”
