TULIP FEVER

If you couldn’t tell by the director, screenwriter and the involvement of The Weinstein Company, ‘Tulip Fever’ wants to be a ‘Chocolat’ or, even better, the new ‘Shakespeare in Love’.

It would be remiss of me not to include some of this film’s notorious backstory. ‘Tulip Fever’ was initially put into production in 2004, with a cast that included Natalie Portman, Jude Law and Jim Broadbent, with director John Madden (‘Shakespeare in Love’) and a script from Moggach and Stoppard. Until, that is, then-Chancellor Gordon Brown closed a UK tax loophole that increased the film’s costs by millions practically overnight. Production was immediately cancelled, despite sets being built and over 12,000 tulip bulbs already planted.

The Weinsteins got a hold of the property several years later, after names including Tom Hooper and Peter Chelsom tried and failed to bring the film to life. Harvey Weinstein even attempted to convince Harry Styles to make his acting debut in the film, but was turned down. He still managed to get an all-star cast to sign on and gave it a release date at the heart of Oscar season in 2015.

That release didn’t materialise, however, and the film rescheduled for summer 2016. But just nine days before it was due to hit U.S. cinemas last July, the Weinstein Company announced it was pulling ‘Tulip Fever’ off the schedule and moving it to an unspecified date in early 2017 - despite having already booked screens and lined up promotion.

Why? Well, Harvey and Bob Weinstein have been investing enormous sums of money in Oscar campaigns to help promote their projects and those projects have been [i]really bad[/i] lately (the company may not even exist by the time this review goes up).

Anyway, 'Tulip Fever' has finally arrived! Was it worth the wait?

Immediately noticeable are the tell-tale characteristics of a troubled production process: the patronising use of a narrator to walk the audience through the plot. Shaky camera. Jumpy editing.

How is the script by renowned playwright Tom Stoppard? If you like mistaken identities, overheard conversations, dumb narrative contrivances and characters conveniently swept away by circumstance, my friends... you are in for a treat!

It’s hard to tell whether it’s due to bad acting, poor writing or the way the film has been pruned, but there are some yawning voids where there should be characterisation, like Cara Delevingne, who plays a prostitute in what amounts to a cameo, and Zach Galifianakis as Jan’s boorish Comedy Oaf Sidekick™ manservant, Gerrit. Even quality British performers such as Holliday Grainger, Jack O'Connell, Douglas Hodge, David Harewood and the legendary Judi Dench are ill-treated.

The thing which really snaps the stem of this sad little flower of a film is the complete lack of sexual chemistry between the usually impressive Vikander and Dane “Leo DiCaprio was too expensive” DeHaan. Due to their lack of heat, Christoph Waltz’s cuckolded antagonist ends up being quite sympathetic by comparison.

The only higlight is the work of production designer Simon Elliott and cinematographer Eigil Bryld. The film has beautiful costumes and high production values – the audience gets a real sense of Amsterdam as a city in the flush of a new modernity built on the wealth of international shipping and trade. Bryld’s cinematography is suitably crisp and colourful.

Harvey Weinstein defended this film in advance with a column for Deadline Hollywood by whining, “I know this film’s not perfect, very few are, but it’s a perfectly good time in a movie theatre.”

Consider the source of the statement and what it implies about the film.

Avoid catching ‘Tulip Fever’ at a cinema near you.