Movie Reviews : Failed Opportunities Mar ‘The Prince’

“The Prince of Pennsylvania” (selected theaters) takes place in Quaker State mine country. It’s a scarred-looking, played-out area of dead hills and gray skies, where memories of the Harlan County mine war era mix with punk horror, electric evangelism, drive-in promiscuity and rock ‘n’ roll bikers.

An interesting mix. And, at first, a promising directorial debut by screenwriter Ron Nyswaner (“Smithereens”). But, sadly, Nyswaner isn’t content with the texture of small-town life and character. He spins out into big-time movie-movie archetypes, preposterous cliches, sex and violence on an inflated, dippy scale.

The title refers to a blue-collar Pennsylvania mine worker’s delusions of grandeur. Believing he’s the king in his castle--his wife a queen, his son a prince--he ignores the fact that his kingdom, the bedrock tradition he believes in, is crumbling around him. The wife (Bonnie Bedelia) is sleeping with his best friend. And his son, stewing in the Zeitgeist himself, wants no part of monarchy. The give-and-take between dad and son--Fred Ward as Gary Marshetta and Keanu Reeves as Rupert--is the movie’s core. And the overtones range from Oedipus to “The Last Picture Show” to Paul Simon’s “My Little Town.”

Nyswaner comes from mine country himself, Clarksville, Pa. At first, the film seems to be another Portrait of the Artist as a Young Outcast. Reeves plays Rupert as a cross between Johnny Rotten and James Dean: oozing sensitive defiance, as he wanders through a car graveyard or breaks up a baptism with his new punk haircut. The style is whacked out and wild eyed that suggests Reeves remembers all too well how Crispin Glover stole “River’s Edge.”

Characters like this are often traps for sentimentalism and special pleading, though, on some level, it’s clear Nyswaner is mocking Rupert, making him a foul-up. And though the father is a knee-jerk hard-liner--a Vietnam vet who sneers at his son and calls Oliver North a “great American”--Nyswaner tries to pay tribute to his better qualities: family feeling, courage and loyalty.

But the movie stumbles into a grand delusion of its own, an uneasy blend of realism and wish fulfillment. There are a few scenes by Amy Madigan as Clara, the aging hippie turned frustrated drive-in owner, one scalding argument between Ward and Bedelia that hum with recollected life. Others are so empty and unfelt they seem intended for this season’s hot teen sex comedy.

By the time “Prince” reaches its kicker--Rupert and Clara kidnaping his dad, chaining him down and holding him for ransom--we’ve sailed off from solid earth to the pop-schmaltz ether.

Nyswaner leans toward a caustic but goofy social satire, reminiscent of Jonathan Demme, with whom he’s worked, but his movie is too stiff, too thin. Everything is set up, locked in. If Marshetta didn’t want his son to be a sensitive weirdo, why did he give him a name like Rupert? Why are the kidnapers wearing Freddy Krueger masks? Don’t ask: after all, it’s only a movie.

And that, unfortunately, is all that “The Prince of Pennsylvania” (MPAA rated R, for sex, nudity and language) is, though it had the opportunity to be more. All that life Ron Nyswaner left behind him, may be far more interesting than the frantic, ugly schlock he’s ended up with here.