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75With much help from an exasperated off-screen prompter - the only other performer in this small gem - Plummer's Barrymore shows flashes of glory as he delivers bits and pieces of various Shakespearean roles.
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75Among the drawbacks: Director Érik Canuel jumps through hoops in an effort to make the stage piece (by William Luce) move like the movie piece it isn't.
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80Mr. Plummer stumbles beautifully, poignantly and often, leering and searching through a haze of memory or, with concern edged with panic, calling for "a line, a line" much as Richard III calls for a horse.
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40Barrymore is a delicious opportunity to watch the great Christopher Plummer perform the role that won him a second Tony Award. But it's also a lesson in the pitfalls of personality-based minimalism. While Plummer acts his heart out, the script becomes one punchline after another.
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80God, I love Plummer's performance - the twiddling fingers, the tipsy sway of the head, the reverberating roar, as well as the pathos of a man who can't stop acting long enough to hear the cry of his own soul.
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50The material itself has a formulaic solo-bioplay rhythm neither performer nor director can fully elude.
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40This isn't a film, it's a recording of canned ham-tasty, certainly, but creaky nonetheless.
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50Two things to keep in mind when considering Barrymore, starring Christopher Plummer as the great John B: It was brilliant as a one-man stage show; it was never a good candidate for film.
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38Director Erik Canuel fails to deliver us from the inevitable hermeticism of the material.
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80It takes a minute for the film to move beyond a kind of gilded stasis, but once it does, it - and Plummer - are riveting.
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