A case of once written, twice shy

MOVIE REVIEW: SALINGER. There can be no disputing the late J.D. Salinger would have loathed the new documentary about his life.

A case of once written, twice shy

MOVIE REVIEW: SALINGER. There can be no disputing the late J.D. Salinger would have loathed the new documentary about his life.

Like that timeless teen rebel Holden Caulfield, the hero of Salinger's sole published novel The Catcher In the Rye, the author hated "phonies" with every fibre of his being.

Whenever it has no real grasp of what the famously reclusive Salinger was up to, the doco gets very phony, very quickly.

Sure, director Shane Salerno (best known for his screenplays for Armageddon and Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem, I kid you not!) had very little verified information to work with when commencing this project.

Nevertheless, if this project really did take nine years to make, you would have thought Salerno might have delivered one shock revelation not previously on record.

Nope. Nothing of shock here, unless you haven't had your Richter scale serviced since date of purchase.

The best that can be said of the movie is that it does string together all known Salinger factoids (and the odd salacious titbit as well) into one easy-to-follow chronology.

Salinger's first girlfriend ditched him for Charlie Chaplin. Salinger hatched much of the classic The Catcher In the Rye as a soldier, between terrifying periods of combat at the close of World War II.

Salinger had a thing for women aged below 20. The more the legend of The Catcher in the Rye grew, the less interested Salinger became in publishing again. Salinger was a maverick literary genius, and a grotesquely indifferent husband and father. The writing was all that mattered. The rest of the world could go to hell.

The doco pushes all available data about the author at the viewer. But it cannot pull the viewer any closer to the man.

Three years after his death at age 91, J.D. Salinger can still black out the limelight at will.

> SALINGER [M]

Director: Shane Salerno (Sundown)

Starring: Martin Sheen, Tom Wolfe, Judd Apatow, Margaret Salinger

Rating: 2.5/5

"The one-novel wonder who kept 'em wondering"