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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Dragonfly
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  out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
1 star out of 4
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Truly dim-witted movies are few and far between; most coast into
obscurity - or the video store - unheralded and un-reviewed. But when Kevin
Costner stars and Tom Shadyac ("Patch Adams") directs this anguish-filled
spiritual/supernatural thriller, it's hard to ignore. Costner plays Joe Darrow,
the cynical chief of Emergency Services at a Chicago hospital. Despite his
misgivings, his pregnant wife, Emily (Susanna Thompson), a pediatric oncologist,
has gone on a Red Cross mercy mission to Venezuela, where there's a terrible bus
accident in which everyone is presumed dead. Darrow is devastated, throwing
himself into his work and obsessing about dragonflies, which were his wife's
talisman since she had a dragonfly-like birthmark on her shoulder. "They were
sort of her thing, like a personal totem," he recalls. "Now I see them
everywhere." Indeed, they're eerily tapping at his windows and weirdly
fluttering in his brain. Is his dead wife is trying to communicate to him
through them. And what about her terminally-ill young patients who report
they've seen her "inside a rainbow" and draw wavy crosses? Darrow's neighbor
(Kathy Bates) thinks he's crazy, but a nun (Linda Hunt) explains, "There are 100
steps on the ladder of consciousness." Eventually, for Darrow, that ladder
shamelessly stretches to a Stone Age village on the Amazon River. Costner's had
practice doing this stolid grieving widower gig in "Message in a Bottle," but no
actor could survive the feeble, mawkish dialogue by Brandon Camp, Mike Thompson
and David Seltzer, plus Shadyac's ponderous pacing. On the Granger Movie Gauge
of 1 to 10, "Dragonfly" scores a sappy, silly 3, appealing to those who call
Madame Cleo for psychic readings and truly believe that TV's John Edwards
"crosses over." Bah, hokum!
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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