The car itself is the star of this movie, the low-slung,bullet-nose that looks like a discreet cross-breeding of the postwarStudebaker and the Batmobile. And the most amazing fact about theTucker automobile is that Preston Tucker did actually succeed inbuilding 50 of them, just as he said he would, before he was shotdown by the Big Three from Detroit and their hired guns inWashington.
Would automotive history have been different if Tucker had puthis dream into mass production? Probably not. The Tucker wouldprobably have thrived for a few late-1940s years and then joined thelong, slow parade of the Hudson, the Kaiser, the Nash, theStudebaker, the Packard, the Willys and all the other makes that yourdad always warned you couldn't get parts for.
And yet Francis Ford Coppola's new film is not so much about thecar as about the man, and it is with the man that he fails todeliver. "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" paints us a Preston Tuckerwho is a genial, incurably optimistic dreamer, a man who gathers asmall band around him and inspires them to build a great car, and yetall the time he lacks an ounce of common sense or any notion of thereal odds against him. And since the movie never really deals withthat - never really comes to grips with Tucker's character - itbegins as a saga but ends in whimsy.
Tucker is played by Jeff Bridges with a big, broad smile and aknack for finding hope even in the ash heaps of his dreams. He livesin the center of a large, cheerful family, with a wife (Joan Allen)and a brood of kids who seem cloned directly from those late-1940sradio sitcoms where somebody was always banging in through the screendoor and announcing that he smelled fresh apple pie.
Tucker made his fortune during World War II by inventing andmanufacturing the Tucker Turret for Air Corps bombers. Now he thinksthe American public is ready for a truly modern automobile - one withgreat design and good mileage and safety features like pop-outwindshields and seat belts. His master touch is a third headlight inthe middle of the front grille that will turn in the same directionas the steering wheel. But Detroit doesn't much like the idea ofseat belts - they might give the public the idea that cars aren'tsafe - and they don't like the idea of Tucker, either.
Tucker applies for the use of a war-surplus manufacturing planton the Southwest Side of Chicago, and gets it. He and his team throwtogether a prototype automobile out of spare parts scavenged in a junkyard. He's a master at personal publicity, floats a stock issueto raise money, sets up his assembly line and starts racing against adeadline for introducing his first model.
But it's about here that the movie really loses its grip. Weare never given any real insights into what makes Tucker tick; wesee him from the outside, like the public, and he's all bluff andcharm and sideshow pep talks. The problems of the assembly line arealso painted without any details. There is no sense here that themovie gives any serious attention to the process.
The worst scene in the movie is the most crucial, the scenewhere Tucker is scheduled to unveil his new beauty to the assembledAmerican automobile press. We get a passage that's too long and tooconfused, a comedy of errors as the workmen try to push the big carup a ramp as a fire starts backstage and Tucker stands in front ofthe curtain bamboozling the press. A little of this would have madethe point; Coppola pushes it to distraction.
It is difficult, by the way, to avoid the notion that, inPreston Tucker, Coppola sees a version of himself. Coppola says hehas been fascinated by the Tucker legend ever since he first saw aTucker car in the late 40s, and he has owned a rare collector's modelduring the 10 years he has been trying to get this dream film off theground. Many details are the same between the automaker and the filmmaker: the loyal wife, the big family, theclose-knit group of friends who pitch in at all hours, the grandioseschemes, the true genius, the peculiar knack of confusing the publicwith unnecessary explanations and, in particular, the ability to holda launching - or a premiere - in the worst possible way. Coppola isknown for holding "secret" previews that the press somehowgate-crashes, leading to premature and hostile reviews. And he isknown for fiascos like his ill-advised decision to publicly announcethat he was having "problems" with the ending of "Apocalypse Now,"allowing self-doubt to cast an unnecessary shadow on his masterpiece.
The parallels between Coppola and Tucker are so obvious thatit's surprising Coppola didn't observe one more: He has been asprotective of Tucker's private life as he rightly is of his own."Tucker" does not probe the inner recesses of Preston Tucker, is notcurious about what really makes him tick, does not find anyweaknesses, and blames his problems, not on his own knack forself-destruction, but on the workings of a conspiracy. And it makesthe press into a convenient and hostile villain. This won't do. Ifwe're offered a movie named "Tucker: The Man and His Dream," we leavefeeling cheated if we only get the dream.
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