Here’s to low expectations. No one – teenage groupies aside – is going to go to ‘Rain Man’ expecting fireworks. It’s a hit movie on stage. It stars a Hollywood hunk, Josh Hartnett, with zero theatre experience. And it’s had a ‘troubled’ production – two different directors; opening night delayed. Having staggered into the theatre under the burden of all that information, one leaves practically walking on air, pleasantly surprised by a decent evening’s entertainment.
But not a sophisticated one. ‘Rain Man’, the film of which secured Dustin Hoffman a predictable Oscar for playing an autistic savant, is about a grasping young car dealer whose heart is melted (in a week) through contact with his long-lost ‘retard’ brother. It requires a veritable triple jump of faith to believe in Charlie’s overnight conversion from nasty piece of work to dewy-eyed carer; and it tidies Ray’s developmental disabilities into a manageably cute package. It also betrays its filmhouse origins (it’s a road movie, that most cinematic of genres) in its episodic structure and a set that frames and reframes scenes like a camera.
But it’s easy to submit to the story’s soft heart, mainly because Hartnett and Adam Godley as Ray strike up a believable, un-schmaltzy bond as the brothers united by the recent death of their dad. Dan Gordon’s script updates proceedings to 2008 (references to Osama bin Laden and all). Under Terry Johnson’s direction, the cheesier moments (Charlie recalling his infancy; the brothers dancing together in a Vegas hotel room) are handled with a light, sensitive touch, and proceedings whip along at a pace that’s as close to précis as play. Rather like Ray, the West End ‘Rain Man’ is capable of more – but not much more – than you might think.
