At the end of Alfie, the remake of the 1966 classic, one question sprang to mind: Why?
Although this new Alfie, the story of a playboy cad who runs through women like a lawnmower runs through grass, has been updated from '60s London to contemporary New York, the theme seems to have been unearthed from a time capsule. The original Alfie, which starred Michael Caine in a star-making performance, defined the era of the Swinging Sixties. Today, although still entertaining, its philosophy seems dated.
Sadly, the new Alfie, co-written and directed by Charles Shyer and starring Jude Law, has nothing new to say.
Casting here is a problem, too, because Law doesn't have the nasty self-centeredness Caine managed to convey. Law is too boyish, too Peter Pan-ish, too cute. Rather than growing to despise the lout, we can forgive him his trespasses into the lives of his conquests. The women, most of whom want to be loved and some of whom are married, are used by Alfie for his basic sexual needs, then dumped like yesterday's newspaper, sometimes with not so much as a goodbye.
But he doesn't realize, or care, that he's hurting people. Alfie's philosophical musings about his life and his reason for being, directed right into the camera lens at the audience, make him seem not so much self-centered as naive while he floats through life.
"I rarely spend the night in my own bed," he says at the start of Alfie, defining the only important things about a woman as "face, boobs, buns."
Alfie gets away with all this because of his cuddly looks and the ability to win over seemingly any woman with a smothering double-dose of charm. He meets some of his beautiful conquests in his job as a limousine driver, many of them attached to sugar daddies they don't find otherwise appealing.
A longtime sometimes girlfriend, into whose life he sometimes drops when he's between women is Julie (Marisa Tomei), a single mother who hopes against hope that Alfie will someday decide to settle down with her. But "commitment" is not a word in his dictionary.
As soon as one of his girlfriends tries to get too close, Alfie is out the door, looking for greener pastures. He's not even above hitting on his best friend's recent ex-fiancee, Lonette (Nia Long), something he justifies as a "do-gooder operation" in order to comfort her. Much later, this little fling will provide one of the movie's punchlines and give Alfie an insight into the caring and the responsibility even he couldn't have guessed he had.
A brush with mortality slows him, but doesn't stop this amoral character. Alfie is cocky, usually assured, cool. There's no inner warmth. Everything is calculated for the best effect for him.
Among his conquests are Jane Krakowski, a lovely woman with a husband who doesn't give her enough love; Sienna Miller (Law's real-life girlfriend) who is a manic-depressive and gives him a roller-coaster ride of emotional highs and lows; and Susan Sarandon, as a wealthy career woman. Sarandon's airy character was played by Shelley Winters in the original film and, like her, she delivers a blow to the center of Alfie's being that, even if you didn't know it was coming, seems inevitable.
In the end, as Alfie reassesses his life and comes face to face with the future, he realizes he can't go home again. That's pretty much the same conclusion one might have about Alfie, the movie, too.
**1/2
Alfie
Starring: Jude Law, Marisa Tomei, Omar Epps, Nia Long, Jane Krakowski, Sienna Miller, Susan Sarandon.
Rated: R, contains sex, nudity, profanity, drugs.
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