Hide and Seek

One day someone will do a scholarly paper on Robert De Niro's slide into mediocrity. At one time considered to be among the greatest actors of his generation, somewhere along the line he decided to seemingly accept any script that passed through the transom of his agent, making substandard thrillers and comedies for the easy buck, making his collaborations with directors like Martin Scorsese seem like a faint memory. I don't begrudge him this; he's free to make a living anyway he likes, and he's had a lot more box office hits in the last decade than in the three before, but his days as an incendiary performer seem to be over.

Looking over his filmography, I think this was caused by the success of Analyze This, which traded comedically on his tough-guy persona. He hasn't made a "prestige" picture since, and hasn't had a sniff of on Oscar nomination. Instead of making pictures with exciting new directors, he's making tired, generic thrillers, like Hide and Seek, from 2005.

Hide and Seek, directed by John Paulson, is slickly made and has a fair share of thrills and chills, but it's completely routine. A young girl (Dakota Fanning), goes into shock after her mother's suicide. Her father, a psychologist (De Niro), removes her from therapy in New York City and moves her to a creaky, lonely old house in the country, seemingly defying every movie dictum. Hasn't he ever seen a movie? And why does a family of two need a house that looks like it has six bedrooms?

Fanning, in one of those performances that make you think she's really a very small adult, soon has an imaginary friend, whom she blames for a series of mishaps. First the cat gets drowned in a bathtub, then dad's new girlfriend goes flying out the window. There's a twist involved, a tired old formula that plays on multiple personalities (and coincidentally is very similar to the below-reviewed Session 9).

De Niro pretty much sleepwalks through the role. One wonders if he and Scorsese will ever get together for one last hurrah, or whether De Niro has coasted into a kind of semi-retirement, hardly lifting a finger as he makes one mediocre film after another.