On Screen

This movie’s scrabble-brained approach to religious faith makes the
new X-Files screenplay seem as though it were beamed down from
the quill of St. Augustine himself. I have never before had a film
simultaneously insult both my agnosticism and my Catholic
upbringing. Henry Poole Is Here is condescending toward
believers, contemptuous toward disbelievers, and has the worst
soundtrack in the entire history of cinema.

Henry (Luke Wilson) has just been diagnosed with some exotic
terminal illness, rarely seen “in this country.” He buys a house in a
crappy California suburb, stocks his refrigerator with Krispy Kreme and
champagne, and prepares to die alone. His nosy neighbor, subtly named
Esperanza (Adriana Barraza of Babel), has other ideas: Soon
after he moves in, she drops by with a plate of homemade tamales and
becomes obsessed with a water stain on the house’s stucco exterior.
Believing the stain contains the visage of her Lord and savior,
Esperanza invites a priest to verify its sanctity and a passel of
rheumatic old ladies to try its healing powers. Soon enough, Jesus is
crying tears of real blood, the bug-eyed mute girl next door has begun
to speak in complete sentences, Henry’s perky teenage grocery clerk
starts quoting Noam Chomsky from memory, and—oh, wait, the
Chomsky wasn’t supposed to be the miracle. The grocery clerk, formerly
nearsighted, proclaims she can see again, praise the Lord. Meanwhile,
Henry steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the miracles, explaining that
he doesn’t believe in the existence of miracles. So there, God.

Unfortunately for the audience, it’s a little hard to be astounded
by a fictional miracle when the world it takes place in is so
transparently false. From the incompetent nurse who stabs Henry
repeatedly while searching for a vein to the uplifting pop songs that
periodically interrupt the film’s seemingly pot-addled conversations,
Henry Poole Is Here is so stupid it makes you itch. I half
expected to exit the theater with gushing stigmata—a visible
warning to anyone waiting in line of the depth and profundity of my
suffering.