‘Minnesota’ Feels Pretty Pathetic

In most movies, I have nothing to say against gratuitous violence. Sometimes, such a trait makes a movie better - “Get Shorty” and “Pulp Fiction” are prime examples.

But in “Feeling Minnesota” it made the movie drastically worse.

“Minnesota” seems centered around a romance between Jjacks (Keanu Reeves) and Freddie (Cameron Diaz), who is supposed to be getting married to Jjacks’s brother. With talented actors like those two, such a film has promise.

Every once in a while, though, the movie randomly switches focus to arguments between Jjacks and his brother (Vincent D’Onofrio), which instead of giving us much-needed character development, turns the movie into gratuitously bloody fights that have little effect on the rest of the film.

What is most disappointing about “Feeling Minnesota” is it could have been successful either way, but instead the movie couldn’t decide between the two. Reeves and D’Onofrio could have had a great film about a love/hate relationship between two brothers, and Reeves and Diaz might have been successful portraying a dysfunctional romance.

But not both. “Minnesota” ends up looking like a pathetic clone of “Fargo” - a film based on quirky and bizarre humor - without the quirky and bizarre humor.

While the three excellent main actors of the film are merely victimized by poor direction, the supporting cast is awful on its own. Delroy Lindo and Dan Aykroyd - usually reliable as at least diversions from a bad film if not additions to a good one - detract from the film by playing caricatures of real-life in a movie that might have succeeded with realism.

While I can wax eloquent about why “Feeling Minnesota” was such a bad movie, it comes down to one thing: I walked away from the theater wondering why I had wasted my time watching it. There was nothing to be gained from this movie, and the few awkward chuckles were more at the movie than with it.

It’s too bad such talent was wasted with this film. Reeves proved he can be a great romantic actor with “A Walk in the Clouds” and Diaz showed she could be quite a presence in “The Mask.” But in “Feeling Minnesota,” director Steven Baigelman only proved he could make a bad movie.

Grade: D