A man and his music... Adam Sandler in Reign Over Me
April, as TS Eliot once wrote, is the cruellest month, and for this year's record buyers, he wasn't wrong. Not only does April 2007 see the release of another Marillion album, but also the nationwide screening of a film that takes the dewy-eyed social trope of the vinyl junkie and sits it down for a long, hard chat.
In forthcoming post-9/11 buddy drama, Reign Over Me, Adam Sandler becomes the anti-Nick Hornby.
Sandler plays Charlie Fineman, a dentist and family man whose wife and children die when their plane hits the World Trade Center. The accompanying trauma manifests itself in a fairly peculiar way: it reduces him to a bumbling record boy.
Fineman retreats to his college-dorm self: unshaven and monosyllabic, he rides about Manhattan on a ridiculous GoPed, wearing a worn pea coat, his shaggy bob streaked with grey. He looks like a pudgier Bob Dylan. Never without his iPod, Charlie's bulbous headphones become a kind of aural security blanket, blocking out any reminders of his lost maturity.
The Fineman family home is transformed into an under-furnished bachelor pad, in which an ever-present Playstation and video projector screens Shadow of the Colossus onto its bare walls. Independently wealthy - given his multiple insurance payouts - Fineman spends his cash on late night cinema double-bills, Marvel comics, an ever-increasing record collection, and selection of guitars which he can't play.
OK, perhaps we're not so removed from the world of Championship Vinyl. Yet, instead of representing these peccadilloes as a hearty rebel yell against middle-aged life and conformity, Reign Over Me presents them as embarrassing symptoms of mental illness. The film's dramatic tension rests on whether Sandler's character can switch off his MP3 player and make his way back to sensible middle-aged adulthood, as displayed by his responsible family man, former college friend and all-round saviour, Alan Johnson (Don Cheadle).
OK, there are some concessions made towards pop culture's late bloomers. Cheadle's character is a little uptight, and benefits from cutting loose in Charlie's company. Yet, we're never in any doubt as to who's the happier, healthier one in this flick.
Overtly, both High Fidelity and Reign Over Me warn against the pitfalls of a rockin' middle youth; yet where Hornby revels in the immaturity, Sandler portrays the elder pop enthusiast as a little odd and backward. You leave the screening of Reign Over Me not wanting to track down deleted Smiths singles and original, not re-released Frank Zappa albums, but rather wishing you spent less time with your records and a little more with your friends and family.
Yet, isn't that refreshing? Isn't it time we saw a middle-aged enthusiasm for rock'n'roll as mere arrested development, rather than the lifestyle choice of the greying, mop-topped Spartacus?
