SOPHIE (Leif Bristow). 98 minutes. Opens Friday (October 28). For venues and times see Movies. Rating: NN
Another great cast, another crappy script – another Canadian dud. Sophie maintains a distressing pattern.
When her zookeepers parents sell best friend Sheba the elephant to the circus to pay her tuition to a dance academy, aspiring ballet performer Sophie (Brittany Bristow) goes to work at the circus in order to get the elephant back.
There she meets the usual suspects – the big-top owner with the heart of gold (John Rhys-Davies, chowing down on the scenery), a messed-up animal tamer (Thure Riefenstein) and a surly acrobat (Augustus Prew) who’s lost his nerve.
A television reporter (Deborah Kara Unger, wasted) gives the story a bit of complexity, first supporting Sophie, then wondering why the girl doesn’t try to return Sheba to her real home in Africa. But the script fails to develop tension or give Sophie much believable internal conflict.
And every 10 minutes, the movie stops dead in its tracks so that cutesy tunes by unknowns can play over filler – a dance sequence, a trapeze display, Sophie riding her motorbike to the circus site.
A soundtrack is supposed to add something to a movie, not be a vehicle for middling songs by the filmmakers’ best friends.
