Arguably an even more dubious Valentine’s Day option than drugstore chocolates and deli flowers, the charmless and frequently silly “Winter’s Tale’’ is basically a much schmaltzier fantasy version of “Love Story.’’ Spread out over a century, it’s tricked out with such risible sights as a computer-generated flying horse and Will Smith as Lucifer.
“Love Story’’ told us that “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.’’ The exceedingly shaky film that screenwriter and first-time director Akiva Goldsman (“A Beautiful Mind’’) has quarried from Mark Helprin’s critically acclaimed, 688-page novel asks at the outset: “Is it possible to love someone so much they can’t die?’’
Believe me, you don’t want to know the answer.
In 1916 New York City, burglar Peter (Colin Farrell in leprechaun mode, sporting the first of several inexplicable hairstyles) breaks into what he thinks is an unoccupied mansion on the Upper West Side.
There he encounters the beautiful Beverly (Jessica Brown Findlay of “Downton Abbey”), dying of consumption — which somehow makes her look even more beautiful than the expiring Ali McGraw in “Love Story.’’
Beverly’s newspaper-publisher father (William Hurt) encourages their necessarily brief romance despite their class differences — and even though the two actors have zero chemistry together.
Oh, and they’re being relentlessly chased by Peter’s former criminal mentor, Pearly (a crew-cut-wearing, facially scarred Russell Crowe at his hammiest), who supervises the five boroughs for Lucifer (Smith sporting dagger-sharp teeth in a laugh-inducing extended cameo).
Peter tries unsuccessfully to keep Beverly from dying — this is not really giving anything away — but his love endures to the point that he’s still around, and still looking like he’s in his 30s, 98 years later. (Exactly how this works is one of many vague points in the movie.)
Our hero has lost his memory, but an unaged Pearly is still around to jog Peter’s recollections — as is Beverly’s now-106-year-old younger sister (Eva Marie Saint), still editing her dad’s old newspaper.
I could try to explain how Jennifer Connelly — as a cooking columnist with a young daughter (Ripley Sobo) dying of cancer — fits into all of this, but I seriously doubt you’d believe me.
This is the sort of film where people say things like “Everything is connected by light,’’ earnestly discuss the properties of “the blood of virgins’’ and where Peter’s horse — which, when in flight, looks like rejected test footage for the 1982 Tri-Star Pictures logo — always turns up in the nick of time over the span of a century.
“Winter’s Tale’’ is in some ways a love letter to New York City, with extensive footage shot by the great Caleb Deschanel (“The Right Stuff’’ and Zooey’s dad) at locations like Grand Central Terminal and Calvary Cemetery in Queens.
But as a fantasy, it never takes flight, much less earns suspension of disbelief. And as romance, it makes the films derived from the works of Nicholas Sparks look positively sophisticated.