Being Stanley Kubrick

In the new comedy “Color Me Kubrick,” John Malkovich plays a person of no particular talent who passes himself off as a noteworthy artist. He’s a hapless character who provides the movie with two running jokes: One is that he turns most people he meets into mindless sycophants; the other is his wardrobe, which consists of an outlandish assortment of baseball caps, pajama pants, and tops so awful they defy description.I know what you’re thinking: Does Britney Spears really deserve a biopic? But “Color Me Kubrick” is a farcical study of real-life imposter Alan Conway, who convinced plenty of credulous Londoners in the early 1990s that he was the great director Stanley Kubrick, promising them roles in films in exchange for VIP perks. A similar celebrity-impersonation conceit will anchor the upcoming Lasse Hallstrom film “The Hoax,” in which Richard Gere plays a writer who earned brief glory pretending to be the reclusive billionaire (and onetime director) Howard Hughes.Embedded in both films is a larger point to be made about unearned celebrity, but in “Color Me Kubrick” that point never emerges. What does is the fact that everyone involved in the picture had a jolly good time making it, especially Mr. Malkovich, who capers brilliantly, but in the end rather pointlessly, through a Peter Sellers repertoire of amusing accents and getups.Mr. Malkovich’s Conway brings a comically undisciplined approach to his impersonation of the famously reclusive filmmaker: The only consistent thing about it is that he gets around to saying he’s Stanley Kubrick. Conway has evidently never seen “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Shining,” or “A Clockwork Orange,” but it doesn’t matter because most people — and this is the full extent of the film’s satire — are willing to take him at his word. (Of course, Conway’s baseball caps and undisguisable eccentricity don’t hurt.)The British Conway wears his “celebrity” lightly — he doesn’t strut through a room, he tiptoes — casually offering to help handsome male strangers achieve fame in exchange for whatever they have to offer — in most cases, sex or free drinks. (“Rich people never have any cash on them, do they?” a starstruck observer muses as Conway makes off with his 20 pounds.)Conway is reported to the police, but since his dupes are too embarrassed to testify, he carries on unpunished, eventually persuading a flamboyant D-list showman (Jim Davidson) to put him up in a fancy seaside resort while he supposedly works on getting him a gig in Las Vegas.Conway’s Kubrick at this point has a broad Yiddish accent, and one excellent scene finds him splayed out on his bed, lecturing a hotel employee on how “Miss Kirk Douglas” would have had him fired for forgetting to bring up cigarettes. I believe Mr. Malkovich’s outfit in this scene consists of polka-dotted green socks, long johns, and some sort of flower-print neck scarf, but it gets awfully hard to keep track.Conway tries on various British and American accents — Kubrick was from New York but worked in England for most of his life — even sounding, at one point, like Charlton Heston. Mr. Malkovich gives Conway an almost lumbering physical aspect in his unguarded moments, but when he glides up to a young fashion designer in a bar, he suggests nothing so much as a slightly chilled snake. There’s no rhyme or reason to any of it: Conway is simply a shape-shifter who can’t control his shape.Mr. Malkovich is a delight to watch — you get the impression he would have done the film for free — but otherwise there’s not much going on here. First-time director Brian W. Cook and the screenwriter, Anthony Frewin, give little shape to the story, and they have no idea what to make of Conway. Both filmmakers used to work for Kubrick (Mr. Frewin claims he was the one who first discovered what Conway was up to), and they take a slightly condescending attitude toward this charlatan and anyone who took his bait; “Color Me Kubrick” is uninterested in exploring an apparent personality disorder beyond its comic potential, and the film’s weak attempts to express disapproval are no match for Mr. Malkovich’s smug versatility and preposterous costumes.“Color Me Kubrick” has a few awfully funny moments, but it’s odd that any film with an even tangential relation to the great director should feel so formless and slippery. You might walk out this one feeling just a bit hoodwinked.

Being Stanley Kubrick

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