About Harrison Ford's (Arguably) Worst Movie

According to IMDb, Harrison Ford has 87 acting credits to his name. Any actor is bound to appear in a stinker or two*, especially over the course of such a long career. When I decided to dedicate this week's newsletter to one of Harrison's worst movies, I had plenty of choices. I could plumb the rancid, racist depths of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Or revisit this scene in Hollywood Homicide:

But in the end, there was only one film that I wanted to talk about, and that film is Regarding Henry.

Regarding Henry came out in 1991. It's a movie with solid credentials: it was directed by Mike Nichols, who had directed Harrison in Working Girl three years earlier, and co-stars the divine Annette Bening. The screenplay was written by a promising young sprout named J.J. Abrams.

Harrison stars as Henry Turner, a hotshot lawyer. When we meet him, he's delivering his closing argument in a wrongful death suit, pretending to feel sorry for the man that his client, a hospital, has killed. After winning the case, he goes home to his enormous but impressively bland apartment, which is across the street from the Met. He yells at his young daughter for spilling grape juice on his piano, attends a fancy party with his wife (Bening), returns home, runs out for cigarettes, and gets shot in the head by John Leguizamo, who is busy robbing a bodega. Faster than you can say "let's traffic in harmful stereotypes," Henry goes from this:

to this:

Henry's wife is told he might never speak or walk again. He also has amnesia. Things look bad!

But then, with the help of an unfailingly cheerful physical therapist (Bill Nunn, who deserved way better) and Henry's daughter, who teaches him how to tie his shoes and read, Henry regains his motor skills and some of his memory. What he doesn't regain is his old personality. Instead, he becomes something of a holy innocent, not a boy, not yet a man. He makes paintings of Ritz cracker boxes. He's nice to the maid** and spends quality time with his daughter. He goes out wandering one day and comes home with a puppy. He stargazes*** on his balcony with his wife while they wear matching button downs (?!).

It's hinted that money might now be a problem, but then we see Annette Bening sell a townhouse to one of her rich, cunty friends, and the problem is solved. We see Henry, who has only just learned to read again, return to work to scour complicated legal briefs and do some interior decorating.

Above all, we see a lot of cheap and yet shamefully expensive sentimentality, a movie so hell-bent on convincing us there's nothing like a head injury to make a man into a better husband and father that it can't be bothered with logic, character development, or attention to detail. The movie doesn't know who Henry is: tall, kind child, or man with a newly acquired moral code? "One minute you're an attorney and the next you're an imbecile," one character says of Henry, and while we're meant to feel aghast at the comment's cruelty, I'm a more bothered by the cruelty of a screenplay that suggests random violence is a useful corrective to a shitty personality.****

Having said all that, the movie is a semi-fascinating artifact of its time, when '80s greed gave way to '90s pap on-screen; in a certain light, Henry's redemption can be read as an apologia for the preceding decade. It also has something of a legacy: I like to say that Regarding Henry crawled so that I Am Sam could walk and Simple Jack could chase butterflies. For all its flaws, the movie is a source of comfort for me, perhaps because it's a reminder that you can be one of the most powerful and beloved actors in Hollywood and still flop spectacularly. Which is to say that Regarding Henry is indeed heartwarming, just not for the reasons it was intended to be.

What I'm consuming this week:

Reading: Fat Swim, Emma Copley Eisenberg's engaging new short story collection.

Watching: Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story.

Listening: Sonny Rollins, "St. Thomas."

*With the exception of the late John Cazale, whose entire filmography is The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, The Conversation, and Dog Day Afternoon.

**It would take a separate newsletter to address all the racial stereotypes in this film.

***Given New York's light pollution levels, this may be the most unbelievable part of Regarding Henry.

****In retrospect, Regarding Henry could have been an excellent black comedy.