ACCUSATION:
Hollywood-hokey.
DEFENSE:
And I will always love it.
I bet if you poll a hundred people right now what they thought about when they heard of Whitney Houston’s tragic death last weekend, at least 75% of them would sing a few bars of I Will Always Love You or mentally have the image of the late great diva in her big screen debut, The Bodyguard.
Although it was a massive box office hit in 1992, and an even bigger soundtrack (still the biggest selling of all time), the movie was plagued with production woes since the 1970s and the critical reception still has a score of 39% on Rotten Tomatoes.
So, with that I just want to make clear that I’m not under the impression that it’s a good film. But it sure is a fantastic bad movie. Probably one of the best.
Like all badly overproduced movies, there’s quite a back-story on the production.
Written by Lawrence Kasdan (The Empire Strikes Back) originally as a vehicle for Diana Ross and Steve McQueen in 1976, the project raised its ugly head again in 1989 with Ryan O’Neal replacing the late Steve McQueen. I’ve never read the original screenplay, nor compared it to the shooting script from 1992, but I’m pretty sure much of the bad dialogue survived the drafts. “The people who hire me, they don’t have to be convinced to save their own lives,” says Kevin Costner’s Frank Farmer. Generic was never more entertaining.
Why the film’s a hit is easily found in the charm Whitney Houston brought to the character of Rachel. Sure she was sort of playing herself, and the pop music hits the movie spawned only add to the meta, but the story really moves along and alternates between over-the-top thriller to splashy, flashy romance set in the backdrop of the music industry. English director Mick Jackson, coming off of one of the greatest movies about Los Angeles, L.A. Story, uses LA authentically for backdrop. It should be noted that he similarly directed the city’s destruction five years later in Volcano.
But getting back to why we love The Bodyguard, with a wink.
Maybe it’s the ridiculous Queen of the Night musical number that was dated before it was filmed. Perhaps it’s the evil sister subplot (oh, spoiler alert) that’s executed with such a heavy hand you can almost imagine actress Michele Lamar Richards is hissed at wherever she travels in her personal life.
I know, for me personally, the moment I fell in love with the movie and continue to love it any time is in finale. Timed perfectly to render tears, Whitney sings the I Will Always Love You after parting from Costner, her true love. They hug, the don’t really kiss. She boards the plane. We know this is not the way it should be, but love, you see, is very complicated. WAIT. She stops the plane. She runs to him (foreshadowed earlier of course in the song I Wanna Run to You). They kiss with passion. The camera does a 360 around them.
Slowly after the song fades into instrumental, we follow a long tracking shot of Costner as a lone bodyguard for a new client. The chorus swells again and the credits roll. Somewhere in the background was a studio exec high-fiving his colleagues and claiming responsibility for the film’s 13 week rule at the box-office.
I’m not certain, but I’m thinking this was One Moment in Time Whitney sang of.
