The Keanu Reeves Project - A Walk In The Clouds

A Walk in the Clouds (1995) - Paul Sutton

Sorry for the brief delay in the Keanu Reeves Project.  I've finally gotten around to watching Ozark and have been plowing through it the last several days instead of watching my Keanu movies.  And because this project is NOT about Ozark, I won't write my feelings on that particular show, because you're not here for Ozark thoughts, you're here for my posts about Keanu Reeves movies!  

I think part of the delay in the project is that after my last post on Johnny Mnemonic, a movie I loved for all the wrong reasons, I saw that the next movie up on the list was "A Walk in the Clouds," a movie I didn't know anything about but surmised was a romance with Keanu as the lead, something I didn't have optimistic feelings about.  

It's not to say I'm against romance movies or love stories.  In fact, some of my favorite movies can be classified as love stories, such as "The Last of the Mohicans," and "True Romance."  For some reason I'll never understand, I used to love "Wicker Park," a movie so stupid that if anyone had a cell phone it could have been five minutes long.

So it's not that it was a romance that turned me off before watching "A Walk in the Clouds," I think it's more of Keanu Reeves starring as a romantic lead.  I don't know, I'm just not into it.  In fact, I would say that "A Walk in the Clouds" is the first of several Keanu Reeves movies I haven't gotten to yet where he plays a lead in a romance.  Sure, there were "romance" aspects in other movies so far but no movies with a true romantic theme.  

So while I know I've got more to come like "Hardball" and "The Lake House," "A Walk in the Clouds" is the first real romance movie so far in this project.  So after plowing through the first two seasons of "Ozark," I finally got around to watching it and came away feeling a bit unjustified in my total aversion to watching it.  

So Keanu Reeves co-stars as Paul Sutton where he's just gotten back home to San Francisco after fighting in World War 2 where he returns to his wife, played by Debra Messing (in her film debut) who didn't even bother reading the letters he sent every day to her.  We can't really blame her too much as we find out they had barely known each other prior to getting married and they don't seem to have much in common or that much of an attachment to one another.  So yeah, we already know where this is going.

I'd probably marry her too if I was off to face near certain death

Paul is a chocolate salesman, a profession that apparently existed in 1945, and he immediately hits the road for....door to door chocolate sales I guess?  Anyway, he's headed up to Sacramento by train where he has a chance meeting with a young Mexican American woman named Victoria, played by Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, a woman I don't know from anything other than this movie. Victoria is headed home from graduate school to visit her very wealthy family, as they run a vineyard in Napa Valley.

After ending up stuck on the side of the road with her, Paul learns that she's gotten pregnant from one of her professors (now out of the picture) and her father is basically going to kill her when he finds out about everything.  Paul, being the genuinely nicest guy in the world with no ill intentions offers to go home with her, pretend to be her husband, and then ditch out the next day to take the fall as the world's biggest asshole so Victoria can have her father think she's kept her honor to the family.  Okay, sure, I'll buy it for the sake of this movie.  

Well, a lot of this movie is pretty formulaic from here - one day turns into several days, they fall in love, the end.

Sure, a few other things happen here and there.  Victoria's grandfather, Don Pedro (played by Anthony Quinn), imparts his old man wisdom on Paul, Victoria's father goes from hating Paul to loving Paul, and an entire orchard burns down.

Now, I have to admit something at this point.  I consider myself well versed in very few subjects.  I can barely read or write anymore as evidenced by this blog.  But one thing I am pretty knowledgable about is movies.  So I felt a little stupid not really knowing who Anthony Quinn was prior to doing a little research before writing this entry.  I knew the name but probably couldn't have named any movie he had been in.  Well, Anthony Quinn was fucking prolific in the 50's and 60's, with roles in classics (that I've also never seen) like "Zorba the Greek," and "Lawrence of Arabia."  Oh, and he also won two Oscars.  Anyway, I'm really only pointing this out because he was probably the best part of "A Walk in the Clouds," and I wish he had more screen time.

A good chunk of the movie focuses on Paul and how he becomes part of the family in a very short time, despite Victoria's father's initial (and rightful) distrust of the entire situation.  But the grandfather sees the pair falling in love even before they do and sort of tries to steer them together as well.  I really thought Anthony Quinn was excellent in this, but I guess that's what you get when you cast a two time Oscar winner.

Brandy and singing in the wine cellar with Anthony Quinn and Keanu Reeves

One thing I found a little troublesome with the movie in general was the portrayal of Victoria's family.  I'm certainly not an expert but everything about them seemed a lot more Italian than Mexican, from their accents to their music to the very odd scene where everyone mashes grapes together that looked like a cut scene from "The Godfather."  In fact, a handful of the actors that played the family had Italian heritage but anyway, what do I know?

A second aspect of the movie that I didn't care much for was that Paul has a number of flashbacks to the war through a handful of dream sequences.  His dreams change through the movie as he gets closer to Victoria and her family, but the war's affect on him is never explored or discussed so the dream sequences seem completely unnecessary and out of place.  

Overall, the movie was totally fine but unmemorable and I doubt I'll ever watch it again but am not angry that I spend an hour and a half watching it.  

A few scattered thoughts:

*I really liked Debra Messing in this as well, even though Keanu catches her cheating on him, she never really comes off as "bad" in this, which is maybe why Keanu is able to break it off with her leaving everyone happy.  I think the movie navigated their marriage in an interesting way and could have been a lot deeper if Keanu had to struggle with leaving her for Victoria.

*Maybe my next career will be door to door chocolate salesman.  Do you think we're going to still have chocolate when the dust settles on 2020?  

*Um, the Zucker Brothers produced this movie.  What.  The.  Fuck?  The Zucker Brothers.  Who made Airplane and Top Secret!  I'd kinda like to see "A Walk in the Clouds" reimagined as a spoof.

*I read Roger Ebert's review of this from 1995 and he was over-the-top effusive in his praise, giving it a full 4/4 stars.  Yo dude, this movie is NOT that good.  

Box Office Mojo: $50 Million ($104 Million adjusted) on a $20 Million budget.  The 29th highest grossing movie of 1995.  A box office success, I have no recollection of this movie being as popular as it apparently was.  It's also the 1,758th highest grossing movie of all time, so there's that.

Rotten Tomatoes: 44% Critics/75% Audience.  Interesting numbers.  I could see the critics disliking it based on how formulaic it was, but I think that number is a little low while the audience also seems a little high to me.

My Movie Rating: I wish I was giving half points because I want to give it a 5.5, but I haven't been doing that yet so I won't start now.  I'm going to round down on this to a 5, because while it was a perfectly fine movie, nothing stands out and I doubt I'll ever watch it again.

Keanu Rating: 7/10.  Again, I don't love Keanu as a romantic lead, I see him as either too silly or too John Wick for this.  But he gets the job done here and was perfectly acceptable.  

Next: The 1996 movie "Chain Reaction."  I'm a little excited because this is another one I've never seen and know very little about other than I think it's also supposed to be Johnny Mnemonic level bad.