The Playlist Review: ‘Winter’s Tale’

The Playlist;

Akiva Goldsman is one of those Hollywood screenwriters who has accrued a fair amount of animosity over the years, both because of his perceived lack of talent (he did have a hand in scripting "Batman & Robin," "The Da Vinci Code," and "Lost in Space," amongst others) and for his almost unparalleled level of success (he won a Screenplay Oscar for his work on Ron Howard's "A Beautiful Mind," and in the process taught us all that mental illness could be cured through the healing power of love). Regardless of what you think of him, Goldsman has genuine power, and for the past few years has used that power to secure funding for a lavish adaptation of novelist Mark Helprin's goopy 1983 supernatural romance "Winter's Tale." It is the ultimate Akiva Goldsman statement, mixing both his propensity for high concept gobbledygook with cloying, saccharine sentimentality. The result is a colossal folly the likes of which we haven't seen in years. It's truly unbelievable. We're still reeling.