Finding Forrester

By PETER CALDER

(Herald rating: * )

The idea of the brash youngster re-energising the cynical veteran is a well-worn one; think Educating Rita or Van Sant's earlier, excellent Good Will Hunting to which this bears such a striking resemblance, it's a wonder someone didn't blow the whistle on the project from the start.

The newest film by one of the pioneers of 80s indie filmmaking replaces the wincing and well-meaning Robin Williams with Connery, who twists his Scots brogue into something like a speech impediment and delivers his lines - most of which are vapid clunky cliches - in a stentorian grumble.

Connery plays William Forrester, a Salinger-like recluse who hasn't come out of his Bronx apartment (or published) since writing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Avalon Landing four decades ago. Quite why this book is so revered - indeed, what it is about - we never learn; nobody talks about it, but its classic status is assumed by the rest of the cast who exchange copies as though it were a holy relic.

Among its admirers is Jamal Wallace (the newcomer Brown), a 16-year-old homeboy with aspirations as a writer, who shoots hoops on a street court beneath Forrester's window. On a dare, he sneaks into the mysterious man's apartment where he is surprised and flees, leaving his backpack containing his precious journals.

When, days later, Forrester tosses the bag back, the books are filled with notes in the margins and an unusual mentor relationship is born.

There's plenty of scope here for an entertaining, if scarcely original, film but screenwriter Mike Rich (whom the press notes describe as "a radio personality from Portland, Oregon") smothers it all in treacle.

The immaculately groomed and ruddy-cheeked Connery makes an unconvincing recluse and the advice he gives is less than revelatory (Shakespeare and Dickens managed quite well without following his pronouncement that no sentence may begin with a conjunction, for example).

Abraham (Amadeus' memorable Salieri) makes a meal of an appallingly drawn villain, Jamal's sneering English teacher, and our Anna Paquin struggles vainly to breathe life into the underwritten part of Jamal's schoolfriend.

The design is overwrought and, while it's not as long as Dr Zhivago, it often seems to be.

The project clearly captured the imagination of Connery, who produced. It's a good deal less likely to captivate audiences.

Cast: Sean Connery, Rob Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Anna Paquin

Director: Gus Van Sant

Running time: 134 mins

Rating: M

Opens: Thursday at Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas.