Trumbo (2003)

Edwards University Town Center 6, Irvine, Calif.

"Trumbo," which I saw tonight at the University 6, is a tired, stylistically wan documentary based on a play by the son of the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. The narrative is repeatedly interrupted by Michael Douglas, Donald Sutherland, David Strathairn and other actors reciting the screenwriter's letters. They mostly have great voices, except for the doughy Paul Giamatti, but it's beside the point: Instead of playing the voices as narration, the story collapses, the actors drone, the mind begins to wander. Commendable as it was to give a writer his voice through the use of extended quotations, the documentary is better served by existing filmed interviews of the writer than by filling the screen with the big heads of Hollywood actors. Interviews with the children, Mitzi and Christopher, and the likes of Kirk Douglas and Dustin Hoffman, are much more interesting.