Vanessa Redgrave does glorious the way other actresses do their makeup. Routinely. Effortlessly. Organically. Yes, Judi Dench has been appointed the current grande dame of English acting, but when Redgrave appears, all pretenders are cast in shadow.
Even she has trouble taking flight, though, while having to drag along the soggy ballast of “A Rumor of Angels,” a tepid, cliche-ridden tale of intergenerational friendship, grief and voices from the grave.
When the movie debuted almost two years ago — at festivals — it might have still had some relevance to the angels-among-us craze, which as we all know birthed certain TV shows and several million chronic delusions. (Director Peter O’Fallon is a director-producer of TV’s “Mysterious Ways,” so he clearly has an affinity for this kind of cloying business.)
The movie is clumsily sentimental and ineptly directed. It looks gorgeous, though, partly because of Roy H. Wagner’s cinematography and partly because it’s set on a ruggedly spectacular stretch of Maine coast where 12-year-old James (Trevor Morgan of “The Patriot”) is spending the summer.
His mother, of course, is dead. Why “of course”? Because that way he gets to hate his new stepmother (Catherine McCormack), resent his father (Ray Liotta) for spending so much time on business in Boston, hang out with his pot-addled Uncle Charlie (Ron Livingston) and, eventually, bond with the local recluse and eccentric, Maddy Bennett (Redgrave). Together, Maddy and James will heal the wounds of their losses — James of his mother, Maddy of her son, who died in Vietnam and who apparently communicates with her from the afterlife.
Maddy, a Mozart freak, fisherwoman and all-around hardy down-easter, spends little time being reticent with James. It’s not, in other words, as if he has to pull her out of her shell. Far from it: He’s an obnoxious, sullen kid whom Maddy decides is worthy of her considerable practical knowledge, as well as her insight into the great unknown. Why? Well, she is the local eccentric.
It’s always a treat to watch Redgrave, though she seems to be channeling her old muse Isadora Duncan during one rather cringe-inducing dance with James, performed while they paint her picket fence. But the emotional aspects of the story are treated with such a heavy hand, the supernatural aspects are so vague and uninvolving, and the group dynamic is so unconvincing that one can’t quite imagine why anybody bothered.
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“A Rumor of Angels” opens Friday. Running time: 1:35. MPAA rating: PG-13 (certain thematic elements, an accident scene and brief references to drug use).
