Recovered Classic: Benny & Joon


Johnny Depp’s sparkling CV is festooned with such a magical array of fantastically off-kilter characters that only someone possessing his immeasurable talent could make each one so endearingly believable. From scissor-handed fairytale creations to angora-loving transvestite film directors, his career choices have been as diverse as they’ve been inspired.

But one of his most memorable, and often forgotten, early appearances was in director Jeremiah Chechik’s marvellously kooky Benny & Joon, a romantic comedy of sorts about a spectacularly odd couple with enough character quirks, eccentricities and behavioural issues to send a convention of psychiatrists running for their own couches.

Revelling in the tagline “a romance on the brink of reality,” Depp stars as Sam, a Buster Keaton obsessed outsider with a God-given talent for visual comedy who goes to live with Benny (Aidan Quinn) and his mentally ill sister Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson) after being gambled away in a game of cards by his cousin. Understandably put out at first, garage owner Quinn soon realizes that Sam is actually just what his troubled sister needs, someone equally unconventional who she can connect with and who accepts her for who she is, despite her regular mood swings, temper tantrums and disturbing habit of setting things on fire. Not that Depp comes quirk free. Far from it in fact. Because when he’s not making toast with an iron or mashing raw potatoes with a tennis racquet, he’s either sat up the nearest tree or attracting crowds in the park with his show-stopping mime act.

Yet while all this crazy behaviour proves hugely entertaining (in one scene, Joon directs traffic with a table tennis bat while wearing a snorkel mask), Barry Berman’s lively screenplay is quick to highlight the fact that both of these peculiar individuals also have considerable abilities, Sam as a comic mime artist and Joon as a painter. Both are also clearly intelligent people, it’s just that Depp’s character is prone to wild eccentricity, while Masterson is hampered by a mental condition which causes her to fly into spontaneous outbursts of rage, sending many a housekeeper packing as a result. By merging all these qualities together, Berman (a former clown) skilfully adds layers to the storytelling which Chechik then brings alive on the screen, introducing moments of genuine emotion, tenderness and tragedy to contrast with the humour and whimsy.

Quinn’s role in all of this is to represent the face of sanity and normality. Having devotedly looked after Joon ever since their parents died 12 years ago, he’s had no real life of his own to speak of, because when he’s not at work, he’s looking after his sister. So when the opportunity to put her in a special home presents itself, he finds himself sorely tempted, especially when potential love interest Julianne Moore becomes a regular visitor after befriending Sam and Joon.

Clearly centred on Sam’s extraordinary Keatonesque ability, the movie is by no means overwhelmed by it. Depp actually enlisted the services of mime, magician and silent film buff Dan Kamin to help prepare him for the role, but the stunning results are used sparingly in a series of carefully choreographed scenes which not only prove the adage that less is more, but also underline the actor’s incredible talent for getting under the skin of seriously oddball characters. What’s particularly remarkable about this performance is that, as in Edward Scissorhands, he doesn’t really need to use words, because his gestures and physicality say it all.

Some credit must also go to Chechik, who strikes a pleasing balance between the amusing and poignant, never letting us forget the fact that while there’s plenty to laugh at, underneath it all there’s a serious issue which is rarely allowed to take a back seat. This reaches a dramatic peak when Benny finds out that Sam and Joon have fallen in love. But as far as Chechik is concerned, it just makes you wonder if all this business about mental illness must have rubbed off on him. After all, he did go on to helm the notoriously awful The Avengers.

A film, which at one time had Woody Harrelson and Laura Dern, attached to play the roles of Benny and Joon, this particular Chechik movie is an easy target for claims that several plot developments are too contrived and Joon’s illness is too romanticised. But there’s a vague fairytale quality to Benny & Joon, which displaces it slightly from reality. A sense of other-worldliness, which transports the viewer to a place where two oddballs can fall in love and, yes, where they can live happily ever after.

David Lichtneker

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