Delayed Reaction: Lorenzo's Oil

The Pitch: Enough Mad Max. It's time for a medical drama.

I don't understand George Miller's career. He started with three Mad Max movies, directing a segment in the Twilight Zone movie in between. He followed that with The Witches of Eastwick, which I've heard had a very contentious set that soured him on making Hollywood films. That led him to Lorenzo's Oil. After that, he spends two decades making a TV documentary, the Babe sequel, and the Happy Feet movies. Finally, he returned to Mad Max, with perhaps his masterpiece, Fury Road. It's a unique road he's traveled.

I was very curious to get to Lorenzo's Oil to see if it was the missing puzzle piece to make sense of the steps in his filmography. It didn't turn out to do that, but it is interesting how easily I could recognize this as being from the Mad Max director. Everything from the sound to the camera work to the performances were familiar. I don't have the vocabulary to describe it. Miller just has a way of handling emotions. It's like when a camera goes quickly from out of focus to in focus, like the moment is sneaking up on the actor. The sound got me too. It's loud and uncomfortable. If it wasn't consistent throughout his movies, I'd question if the mixing was an accident. It's not though. In Lorenzo's Oil, Lorenzo's crying is uncomfortable, amplified, and doesn't really fit*. Miller's touches don't always fit in a lot of places. Susan Sarandon is able to steady her performance (probably why she got an Oscar nomination for it). Nick Nolte isn't able to. Some of it's hit accent, which just sounds silly coming from him, and other times it's that he can't pull off the bigger emotions. Like, what was up with the scene when he falls down the stairs and starts crying? I get what it was going for, but it just came off as the bad kind of melodramatic.

*OK, real-talk for a second. This film came out in 1992, the same year the Rugrats debuted on Nickelodeon. When you hear Lorenzo crying in pain, that is the voice of E.G. Daily, also known for voicing Tommy Pickles in Rugrats. When the film was being made, I don't think Miller and company were concerned about that voice-casting overlap. For me and I assume many of my generation, it is very distracting hearing Tommy Pickles while Lorenzo is writhing in pain.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend