"Jacob's Ladder" is like a David Lynch movie without the guts to just be a David Lynch movie.
Adrian Lyne has done a good job convincing people that he's a bolder director than he is thanks to the shock value in movies like this one and "Fatal Attraction." But at heart he's really a fairly pedestrian director, and "Jacob's Ladder" suffers for it. The film teases us with the possibility that it might go completely off its rocker, but the ending, though probably quite a plot twist at the time before there was an entire industry of plot twist movies, ties everything up with a disappointingly literal and dull bow. The movie has so many fits and starts, going back and forth in time, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, that it never really gets going. And Lyne and Co. mistake loud and gross for compelling and atmospheric; the film plays like one prolonged hysterical note of randomness. Crazy things just happen, but they happen so often and so relentlessly that we stop caring about why they're happening, and indeed even stop thinking they're that crazy within the world of the film. Roger Ebert, in his review of the film "Labyrinth" (which he didn't like by the way), said that if everything is arbitrary, then nothing matters. That's how I felt about "Jacob's Ladder."
The ending felt like a cheap trick rather than one grown organically from within the movie that preceded it.
Grade: B-
Adrian Lyne has done a good job convincing people that he's a bolder director than he is thanks to the shock value in movies like this one and "Fatal Attraction." But at heart he's really a fairly pedestrian director, and "Jacob's Ladder" suffers for it. The film teases us with the possibility that it might go completely off its rocker, but the ending, though probably quite a plot twist at the time before there was an entire industry of plot twist movies, ties everything up with a disappointingly literal and dull bow. The movie has so many fits and starts, going back and forth in time, blurring the lines between reality and fiction, that it never really gets going. And Lyne and Co. mistake loud and gross for compelling and atmospheric; the film plays like one prolonged hysterical note of randomness. Crazy things just happen, but they happen so often and so relentlessly that we stop caring about why they're happening, and indeed even stop thinking they're that crazy within the world of the film. Roger Ebert, in his review of the film "Labyrinth" (which he didn't like by the way), said that if everything is arbitrary, then nothing matters. That's how I felt about "Jacob's Ladder."
The ending felt like a cheap trick rather than one grown organically from within the movie that preceded it.
Grade: B-