There’s a reason most small towns are small towns — being there isn’t all that exciting for most folks. “Welcome to Mooseport,” like the sleepy Maine hamlet where the film is set, certainly has pastoral charm, but there just isn’t much going on. Nice place to visit, but you won’t want to spend two hours there. Ostensibly a political comedy from Academy Award-winning writer Tom Schulman (“Dead Poets Society”), “Mooseport” conspicuously avoids any genuine commentary on modern electioneering. The main campaign issue here is an unlikely love quadrangle that ultimately leads to Gene Hackman delivering the most unpleasant onscreen kiss since he nearly swallowed Barbara Hershey in “Hoosiers.” Sounds funny but, like most other moments in the film, it just isn’t.
Ray Romano’s performance in this, his big-screen debut, suggests he better stick with his eponymous sitcom for at least another year. His friendly neighborhood plumber, Handy Harrison, is a faltering fool so dense, he makes highbrows out of the rest of the clichéd small-town rubes who populate Mooseport. His long-suffering veterinarian girlfriend Sally (Maura Tierney) drops marriage proposal hints like campaign buttons, yet true to character, Handy is too stupid, too wishy-washy to take the bait. When wildly popular former President Monroe “Eagle” Cole (Hackman) — who’s decided to ride out a messy divorce at his lakeside Mooseport vacation home — agrees to run for mayor and sets his sights on Handy’s all-too-willing would-be wife, the mudslinging commences.
We never do discover the origin of Handy’s fear of commitment and faintheartedness, and quite frankly, who gives a damn? There is so little texture to his relationship with Sally, that it’s a wonder she ever agreed to go to dinner, let alone date this dolt for six years. Better to root for her to wind up with the former leader of the free world, because at least then she’d have something to talk about. Despite frequent implausible admonitions of a tattered legacy from his obsequious flak Bullard (Fred Savage — another guy who should have stuck with TV), the ‘Eagle’ clearly has very little invested in the outcome of the election and couldn’t give a broken campaign promise about Sally either. As someone points out, for Handy the stakes are “lose the election, lose the girl.” It doesn’t seem to matter all that much to any of the principals, so why should we care? Vote no on “Welcome to Mooseport.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 20, 2004. Read the original PDF.