Tonight’s Movie: The Majestic (2001)

Last month I was fortunate to make my second trip to Alaska, spending nine days cruising the Inside Passage and more, including a day in Victoria, British Columbia.

I was also fortunate to have a good friend on board, and during sea days Molly and I had the chance to enjoy a couple of movies together thanks to her large iPad. We watched a favorite comedy, THE PALM BEACH STORY (1942), and later in the trip she introduced me to THE MAJESTIC (2001).

Jim Carrey stars in THE MAJESTIC. I don't believe I'd ever seen a Carrey film before, as most of his titles simply don't hold appeal, but I was intrigued by Molly's description of the plot and the fact that the cast included veteran actors such as Martin Landau and James Whitmore. As it turned out, Carrey was also quite good in what is mostly a dramatic performance.

My enjoyment of the film deepened when, in the early going, I recognized the small town where it was set as Ferndale, California, which we visited on a road trip in the summer of 2025. It's a beautiful town filled with Victorian homes, seen in my photo here, and I'll share some additional photos of Ferndale at the end of this post.

Bringing things full circle, Ferndale was the hometown of Guy Fieri, the chef behind a hamburger stand on our cruise ship! It really can be a small world.

Returning to THE MAJESTIC, which is set in the early '50s, screenwriter Peter Appleton (Carrey) finds his career crashing and burning due to suspected Communist ties, related to a girl he dated in college.

Peter gets drunk and then literally crashes out near a small town, coming to with no memory. The local doctor (David Ogden Stiers) expects Peter's memory will eventually return, but in the meantime there's a bigger story going on: Everyone in town believes Peter is the long-lost son of elderly Harry Trimble (Martin Landau), whose soldier son Luke went missing during World War II.

Peter moves in with Harry, who receives a new lease on life and is inspired to reopen his closed-up movie theater, The Majestic. Peter also slowly begins a romance with Luke's fiance Adele (Laurie Holden).

Months happily pass by, and then one day The Majestic shows a film which Peter wrote; as he finds himself curiously familiar with the dialogue, memories of his true life start flooding back...

I was very pleasantly surprised by THE MAJESTIC, though I shouldn't have been, given that my tastes are so similar to my friend Molly's! It was a true "feel good" movie in the manner of Frank Capra. 

The most negative I could say about the film is that some of its 152 minutes should have been cut for a tighter pace, but on the whole I quite liked this film, which was written by Michael Sloane and directed by Frank Darabont.

I particularly enjoyed Landau, in a sweet-natured performance as Luke's father; Gerry Black as the theater's longtime head usher; and Holden as Luke's fiancee, who has become an attorney. Holden was a new name to me, although she has appeared in a number of well-known TV series.

The cast also includes Hal Holbrook, Bob Balaban, Jeffrey DeMunn, Brent Briscoe, Ron Rifkin, and Amanda Detmer.

The movie was filmed by David Tattersall and scored by Mark Isham.

THE MAJESTIC is available on DVD and Blu-ray.  I recommend that those who aren't familiar with this film check it out.

To conclude, here are a few more photos of lovely Ferndale, taken in June 2025.

Click on any photo to enlarge it for a closer look.