“A bunch of sentimental tripe”: why Stephen King hated the Denzel Washington movie ‘Antwone Fisher’ with a passion
He’s one of the very few actors in the business who can lure an audience into their local multiplex by doing nothing other than starring in a movie, but that doesn’t mean every Denzel Washington film will be showered in nothing but the utmost praise and admiration.
Having spent four decades building up goodwill through a string of knockout performances, ass-kicking action hero roles, and acclaimed dramas, Washington has more than earned his stripes as arguably the single most bankable leading man of the modern era.
No performer manages to go through their entire career without a few flops to balance the scales, and horror icon Stephen King went so far as to compare one of Washington’s pictures to emotional manipulation. In the author’s defence, it did tick a lot of the boxes associated with awards bait; it was a biographical drama, carried resonant societal and social undertones, and was powered by a rich emotional undercurrent.
However, it was also well received by critics and did decent business in cinemas after recouping its production budget almost twice over. It wasn’t even a showcase for Washington’s undeniable talents, either, but a passion project where he played a supporting role and stepped behind the camera to direct a feature for the first time.
2002’s Antwone Fisher starred Derek Luke in the title role as a temperamental young man with a history of violent outbursts ordered to report to Washington’s naval psychiatrist after his latest altercation. It’s inspired by a true story and, therefore, doesn’t need to resort to making a concerted play to tug at the heartstrings when the events depicted onscreen actually happened, not that King cared.
“Don’t throw a bunch of sentimental tripe at me and call it social commentary,” he wrote in Entertainment Weekly. “Antwone Fisher is especially annoying in this regard, a $9 Hallmark card that amounts to, ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, life is tough, but you’ll get through’. I knew that already, thanks, now go away.”
King is firmly in the minority in lambasting Washington’s directorial debut for making such an effort to ensure viewers are repeatedly forced to wipe the tears from their eyes that it almost becomes cynical. Sure, it doesn’t reinvent the wheel and hews very closely to the songbook emotionally powerful dramas have been singing from for decades, but it’s nowhere near being one of the industry’s worst offenders in that regard.
Of course, he’s entitled to his opinion, and Antwone Fisher obviously isn’t a film that had the desired emotional impact on King. He’s entirely right in saying that Hollywood has a recurring habit of precision-engineering movies to generate exactly the response Washington hoped to evoke, even if the two-time Academy Award winner’s first tilt wielding the megaphone was hardly the most egregious.
