The BQ barely remembers 2003's "Chasing Holden", other than it starred young professional oddball DJ Qualls as Holden-boy.......who never does get to meet Salinger. Oh, and we vaguely remember the movie's cynical attempt to wring phony tears by having the girl who tags along with Qualls succumb to terminal illness. And that's about it, ......other than it was direct-to-video and dead on arrival, deservedly so.
"Coming Through The Rye" is an infinitely better rendition of this idea, based on writer-director James Steven Sadwith's own infatuation with 'Catcher In The Rye' and his own youthful, Quixote search for Salinger.
Sadwith's fictional stand-in, Jamie Schwartz (Alex Wolff) is an ultra-sensitive, artistic 16 year old, regularly bullied and ridiculed by his prep school classmates. In "Catcher In The Rye",
he sees a mirror of his adolescent torment and in the book's Holden Caulfied, he sees a soulmate, a kindred spirit. Since theater's his passion (the bullies hurl foreign objects at him as he portrays Mercutio in 'Romeo and Juliet'), he writes a stage adaptation of 'Catcher' as a class project, hoping to perform it with a girl he's crushing on.
Thinking he needs Salinger's personal permission to stage the play, Jamie make futile attempts to contact the author's agents and publishers. The perpetual bullying finally hits the boy's breaking point......so he packs a bag, escapes the school and embarks on a quest for the elusive J.D.Salinger, with the help (and car) of sweet local town girl Deedee (Stefania Owen) who's nursing her own unrequited crush on Jamie.
We rolled our eyes a bit at the movie's opening moments,plagued with typical annoying stuff thrown in to impress film festival judges......the camera does a swooping tour through the prep school campus and the background action freezes up so Wolff can deliver faux-Woody Allen asides to the audience. Fortunately, Sadwith comes to his senses and settles down into gimmick-free storytelling as Jamie and Deedee motor through New Hampshire (played scenically well by Virginia) in search of J.D.
And in the film's best written and performed scenes,....our two leads stumble on to Salinger, ably brought to grumpy life by Chris Cooper. Cooper creates a Salinger we could easily believe real.....irascible, guarded, fiercely protective of not just his own privacy, but the literary privacy of his characters, as beloved to him as flesh-and-blood children. To the everlasting consternation of screenwriters, playwrights and movie producers, Cooper-Salinger declares his 'Catcher' creations will live their immortal lives only in the book.....unmolested by any other writer..
It's to Chis Cooper's credit that in his first confrontation with Alex Wolff's Jamie, we found ourselves leaning on Salinger's side. (Wolff really turns up the whiny, self-pitying teen angst to borderline obnoxious levels.....we readily feel Cooper's impatience and exasperation with him...) But the script later regains our empathy for Jamie's inner turmoil.....which has everything to do with the story's being set in 1969. Of that, we'll say no more.....
Next to Cooper, the movie's second MVP is Stefania Owen, who works luminous wonders with the role of the too-good-to-be-true girl next door. It could have been a thankless, dopey character.......but she breathes life into it and your heart aches for her as she tirelessly supports her distracted, clueless, potential boyfriend. (We know of very few young actresses who could accomplish one of those awkward sexual initiation scenes while appearing angelic and horny at the same time....)
The BQ realizes we're never likely to see any stage or screen adaptation of "Catcher In The Rye" (Chris Cooper accurately voices Salinger's contemptuous disdain for all the would-be adapters who've come a-courtin'....).so we'll have to content ourselves with the occasional movie that circles around the subject like this one....we'll throw 3 stars (***) to this tale of 'Catcher'.......
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