FilmBlather.com

"A day without sex is a day wasted."

Paul Schrader's Auto Focus boils down to the following: "Bob 'Hogan' Crane was addicted to sex. How interesting!" Not really, Paul, and your admirable attempt at a dispassionate biopic fails because your principled refrain from judgement ultimately makes for a facile, repetitive, tedious movie. This is essentially a poor man's Eyes Wide Shut -- married man descends into a sinister world of non-stop swingin' sex -- but its metaphors are painfully obvious, and the protagonist's growing obsession and despair too meticulously planned out.

As an interesting side note, Bob Crane's son Scotty has launched a campaign on his website, bobcrane.com, objecting to the movie's suggestion that Bob had penile enhancement surgery at some point in his life. To give Scotty the benefit of the doubt, it is hardly surprising that this was the most significant thing he gleaned from the film as there isn't much else to be found. Auto Focus begins with a young Crane (Greg Kinnear) as the host of his wildly popular radio talk show. He is desperate to break into cinema, but the only thing his agent (Rob Leibman) can offer him is the lead part in a new tv sitcom about a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, on offbeat little ditty called "Hogan's Heroes."

The show, as we anticipate, becomes a hit, and Crane becomes popular. He meets a man named John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), a Sony rep touting the latest breakthroughs in home video technology. The two become friends, and Carpenter introduces the married, formerly faithful Crane to the world of non-stop parties, alcohol and sex, sex, sex. At first Crane is reluctant to tarnish his squeaky-clean public persona and to jeopardize his marriage (though his wife is already aware of his slight predisposition to porn), but soon he discovers that he can't get enough of the young, nubile specimens that his celebrity never fails to score.

It isn't long before he's divorced his wife and married his much younger and more attractive "Hogan" co-star, who is initially accepting of his swinger lifestyle. But soon even she is estranged from her increasingly obsessive husband, and when Colonel Hogan retires his leather jacket after six successful seasons, they are threatened with ruin. Those who know the eventual fate of Bob Crane know where the movie is headed; those who don't should be warned that there are spoilers ahead.

There's a vaguely interesting mini-story here about the home video industry, which has its breakout just as Crane's life begins to fall apart. I liked it, but its thematic detachment from the rest of the film (aside from the fact that Crane liked to film his gazillions of sexual encounters, thereby pioneering amateur porn) smacks of being a technique used to distract our attention from the fact that there isn't much going on in the actual story. The movie has endless scenes of Crane and Carpenter (or "Carpy," as the former begins to lovingly refer to him) seducing random women, followed by the inevitable contrast with his public image, usually in the form of a glaringly phony interview with a "Christian publication" or something equally obvious.

I appreciated the fact that Schrader wanted to moralize as little as possible; he apparently regretted the little historic idiosyncracy that mandates Crane's eventual demise because he didn't want viewers to get the message that irresponsible sex=death. But this directorial detachment unfortunately leads to a glumly boring movie, its unwillingness to take a stand becoming its curse rather than its blessing. The problem isn't that Crane learns nothing from his experience, but that neither do we.

Greg Kinnear likes to intersperse challenging roles among effortless throwaways, and he is one of the few reasons to pay money to see Auto Focus. Another is Dafoe, though I couldn't watch without flashing to the Green Goblin , especially when the script required him to deliver an angry outburst. Schrader, whose visual style has always been competent, insists on filling the movie with trite visual metaphors: i.e. draining the picture of color and using a handheld camera as the protagonist becomes more and more unstable.

There aren't very many likable people in Auto Focus, with Crane's amiable first wife (Rita Wilson) shoved out of the movie by about the halfway point. This isn't a problem but for the fact that we aren't given any reason to stick with the rather despicable characters who remain.