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DEIDRE AND TY. With Reese Witherspoon, Woody Harrelson, Jerry Lewis.
Directed by John Woo. Running Time 280 minutes.
Rated R for violence, language.
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Directed by John Woo, Miramax' holiday release, Deidre and Ty is part sports movie, part feel good romance and part period piece. It stars Reese Witherspoon as Deidre James, a top ten ranked women's tennis player who is a money hungry she devil used to getting what she wants. Deidre lives a debutante life of servants, valets, and hangers-on who agree with everything she says. What Deidre is missing in this life of luxury and success is love.
Enter her geeky scientist uncle Joe, (Jerry Lewis in a what may be his comeback role). Uncle Joe, after attempting to build a time machine in his basement laboratory, has accidentally transported the forty year old Ty Cobb of the 1920's (Woody Harrelson) into the present. Needless to say, one thing leads to another and the shrewish Deidre is soon in conflict with Ty. After living with little resistance to her personality and mores, she suddenly finds her fire met with fire from the impatient and cussing Cobb.
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Above: In one scene, Ty pushes the dame off her chair, exclaiming "You're in my seat woman."
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In one scene, Ty pushes the dame off her chair, exclaiming "You're in my seat woman." Cobb then proceeds to wield an axe handle and chase Deidre's prudish parents out of the family mansion. He eventually wins her over with his indifference and mental abuse, and they become a couple. Surprisingly, the story doesn't end there. Ty and Deidre then venture out to confront his past, which is really his future: the broken family he left behind in the ‘20's.
Ty and Deidre find his grandchildren in Georgia and he berates and insults them and their predecessors. Ty also berates Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, and Mark McGwire, beating the latter with an axe handle. [Why so many axe handles? Apparently, Woo convinced Stanley Tools to finance another John Travolta-Nicholas Cage movie in return for the product placement.]
The film ends on a high note when, in the middle of one of Deidre's tennis matches, Ty finds her Croatian stalker (Willem Dafoe) in the stands and beats him to death with, you guessed it, an axe handle. He then goes on a Die Hard-like rampage, taking on every Deidre heckler in hand to hand combat. Deidre soon joins in the melee, menacing fans with her racket. The bloody finale concludes with Deidre and Ty, their eyes swollen shut from fighting, crawling and calling out in search of one another on opposite sides of the tennis court as pigeons fly overhead.
Butch Rogaine's Rating Scale
**** Excellent
*** Pretty Good
** Sucks
* Blows
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