‘Papa Hemingway in Cuba’ is Sadly Inauthentic

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Rating: 2.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Getting the opportunity to trod upon the very ground that Ernest Hemingway once trod must have been a heady experience for the producers of “Papa Hemingway in Cuba.” But location simply isn’t enough if such a literary legend is to come to life.

The film was directed by noted producer Bob Yari, his second effort, but it smacked of something that had problems all along the way, including sound design and story structure. Yes, the production got permission to film at the actual sites of Hemingway’s haunts in Cuba – his house, for example, had been lovingly preserved by the government there – but unfortunately that seemed like enough for the film. There was absolutely no life to the story, and there were several bad casting choices…including Papa Hemingway…and the film lands with a thud rather than a heralding for the man, image and essence of the legendary writer.

Based on a true story, the center of it all is Ed Myers (Giovanni Ribisi), a Miami newspaper reporter based in the 1950s, who personally thinks he owes his very existence as a writer to Ernest “Papa” Hemingway (Adrian Sparks). He expresses it in a letter that he intends to send to the writer, and it takes his girlfriend Debbie (Minka Kelly) to complete the task, and send it to Papa.

Ed Myers (Giovanni Ribisi) and Ernest Hemingway (Adrian Sparks) in ‘Papa Hemingway in Cuba’
Photo credit: Yari Film Group

As a result of the letter, Myers is asked to come to Cuba to visit Hemingway, and arrives to find the writer’s wife, Mary (Joely Richardson), welcoming him as well. He adapts himself into the quasi-family that Papa had developed in Cuba, while the revolution led by Fidel Castro is going on around the Hemingway compound. The only thing constant, it seems, is change. 


There was some savory material to consider, and yet the film wanted to do too much with the story, and when it collides with the budget or time frame in making the film, or even bad sound design – and an outside observer notices these elements when watching it – then the film doesn’t have a chance. There have been several movie examples in which Hemingway is used as a character, but the truth of him is elusive. This production found it impossible to step back from the “Papa” persona, and a connection to Hemingway is simply not there.

Papa was portrayed by character and stage actor Adrian Sparks, who has a ton of smaller roles in TV and film. He just couldn’t connect the dots of a weak script to a passable performance as the writer, and his vocal characterization was also distracting. He was portraying Hemingway during a severe period of bi-polar behavior, and that emotion needs subtlety. There is much to blame on the script – written by Denne Bart Petitcierc – but Sparks performed it either hot or cold, with no other temperature…just looking like Papa was not enough.

There was something also uncomfortable in the story, via the way the other characters treated the presence of “Ernest Hemingway.” It was all hindsight to his greatness, and not like you’d treat a real human in the moment. The constant use of the nickname “Papa” didn’t register as authentic and got to be a major distraction throughout the more difficult mental picture of the legend. That clunkiness strangely resonated through the whole film.

Papa and Wife Mary (Joely Richardson) in ‘Papa Hemingway in Cuba’
Photo credit: Yari Film Group

There is a bit of a thrill to see the era and man recreated, and that helped a bit, but the background story of Ed Myers and his girlfriend Debbie was straight out of “this actress is very good looking (Minka Kelly) so I have a part for her.” That was part of the glaring transparency going on, and the cinema ship sunk further. It all added up to a low budget inauthenticity, a terrible fate for one of the greatest writers of American literature.

In the Woody Allen film “Midnight in Paris,” Hemingway appears during his French period as a younger man. It was highly comic and a bit of a satire, but there was more of Papa in that brief appearance than in the whole of this film. Any future fictional depictions of Hemingway may want to take note of that.

By PATRICK McDONALD Writer, Editorial Coordinator HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com