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Reviews
The House of Mirth (2000)
Merchant-Ivory, eat your heart out
Merchant-Ivory films, and all their stuffy descendents, have
historically been great soporifics for me. Show me even a
commercial for "Howard's End" or "The Wings of the Dove" and I'm
slumbering like a baby inside of a minute. I'm not sure, then, why I
went to see "House of Mirth." I'm not an "X-Files" fan, which
means Gillian Anderson wasn't a draw for me, Eric Stoltz played
his last good role almost seven years ago in "Pulp Fiction," I loved
Laura Linney in "You Can Count on Me," but I don't think I'd see a
movie just for her, and Dan Ayckroyd can't even remotely be taken
seriously anymore. So why *did* I go? The buzz, I guess. The
word on the street was that "House of Mirth" is a great film, and so,
against my better judgment, I sallied forth. And in this case --
pardon the switcheroo -- the buzz is absolutely 100% correct.
Everything I dislike about period pieces is present here -- the
restrictive manners, the uncomfortable-looking costumes, people
with names like Sim Rosedale -- but this time around it didn't
bother me. Much like "Dangerous Liaisons," one of "House of
Mirth"'s big themes is exposing the conventions of the time as
outright hypocrisy. By the end of the film, we see the era's
standards as being almost solely responsible for its tragic
resolution. And I can certainly get behind that. In short, the
conventions aren't just window-dressing; they're a subtle
accomplice which allows the characters to behave as they do. But
I get ahead of myself.
"House of Mirth" tells the story of Lily Bart (fantastically played by
Gillian Anderson -- her performance almost makes me wish I
watched "The X-Files"), a woman in turn-of-the-20th-century New
York who defies all the things that women of that period are
supposed to do: she plays cards, she doesn't want to get married,
she kisses men who look like Eric Stoltz in a chaperone-less
apartment. This seems to be of great concern to everyone but Lily;
she's having a fine old time, regardless of what everyone else
thinks. But then she gets into money trouble with Gus Trenor (a
marvellously miscast Dan Aykroyd -- so miscast that after a while I
was actually cheering for him to pull it off), which leads to public
humiliation at the hands of Bertha Dorset (the wicked Laura
Linney), which leads to an ever-steepening downward spiral,
revealing Lily's supposed "moral turpitude" for all to see. "House
of Mirth" is a tragedy in the Greek drama sense of the word, with
Lily's tragic flaw being her unwillingness to change, her reluctance
to conform to the dictates of society. I won't give away the ending,
but tragedies, as we all know, end badly.
The film is an adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel of the same
name, and I fully confess to sitting there in the theater with a big
goofy grin on my face as writer-director Terence Davies layered the
plot twists in ever-tightening spirals. It is the strength of Wharton's
novel (and Davies's adaptation) which makes the movie work; the
source material (unlike the execrable "Hannibal") is impeccable. I
mention this because the acting certainly doesn't help matters any.
Anderson, as I mentioned, is fantastic, revealing Lily's character
with equal doses of anguish and steel, and Linney, while not as
fine as in "You Can Count on Me," is good, bitter fun. The rest of
the cast, though, won't be collecting an "Excellence in Ensemble
Acting" trophy anytime soon. Ayckroyd I've dealt with, Stoltz is as
unintentionally weaselly as ever, Anthony Lapaglia (as the
aforementioned Rosedale, one of Lily's suitors) is Smarm Central,
and Terry Kinney (as Laura Linney's husband) just looks mopey
and sad all the time. That this didn't detract from the film is a
testament to Davies's work, and the excellence of Wharton's novel.
"House of Mirth" isn't a good movie to see for anyone looking for a
swell night out on the town (then again, nothing released so far
this year fits that particular bill), but those of you who prefer arsenic
to sugar will like this immensely. Our current crop of screenwriters
and directors could do much worse than examine this film for a
master class in how to execute a complex plot, and how a film's
setting can be just as much a villain as any flesh and blood
character.
The Mexican (2001)
Mediocrity at its finest
First of all, let me go ahead and state my unpardonable bias right off the bat: I am a big fan of both Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts. I thought Pitt's work in "Fight Club" was genius, and I loved every sappy, cliche-ridden moment of "Notting Hill." There. I feel much better now (and while I'm on a roll -- I think Kevin Costner is criminally underrated). The big question, though, when I sat down to watch "The Mexican" was: What version of a Pitt / Roberts movie would this be? For every challenging, well-written film they've done, there's also a dud lurking in the shadows. So, would this be "Seven" or "Seven Years in Tibet"? "Erin Brockovich" or "Runaway Bride"? The answer, if I can keep a foot in both camps, is a little bit of both. And all that saves it from "I Love Trouble" territory is an actor best known for his work on television.
Much has been made of this Pitt-Roberts pairing, the two $20 million-plus superstars joining forces for what would presumably be a megawatt jolt of charismatic nirvana. Well, let's just stop right there. Roberts is no doubt deserving of the superstar billing -- the streak she's on at the moment is, in a word, unprecedented. Pitt, on the other hand, as much as I admire him, should really be glad he's making what he is, and that no studio honchos have caught on to the fact that he's only been responsible for one big runaway hit, and that was "Legends of the Fall," almost seven years ago. "Seven" was such a crafty, gimmicky movie that it would have been a hit without him, and "Interview with the Vampire" starred another little actor named, oh, Tom Cruise. Apart from those two, what do we have? "Meet Joe Black," anyone? How about "The Devil's Own"? "Sleepers"? One of the reasons I like Pitt is that he searches out risky material, but he seems to be more a superstar in theory than in practice. So "The Mexican"'s publicity department handicaps the movie right away by giving it a hype that it couldn't hope to meet.
The story itself is Tarantino-lite / pseudo film noir silliness that we've seen a hundred times in the wake of "Pulp Fiction." Jerry (Pitt) is assigned to travel south of the border and retrieve a gun (rumored to be cursed) for his crooked boss, played by Bob Balaban with his usual delectable smarminess. Complicating things is the fact that Samantha (Roberts), Jerry's addicted-to-self-help girlfriend, dumps him and takes off for Vegas. It's on this trip that Samantha is, oops, kidnapped by Leroy (James Gandolfini), a thug ostensibly hired by Jerry's boss to make sure he doesn't make off with the gun once he has it in his hot little hands.
For the next hour we cut back and forth between Jerry in Mexico and Samanta and Leroy in Vegas (among other places), and this is my one big criticism of the film. These scenes are cut together so that they stand on their own as little vignettes. That sounds nice, but what happens is that, with each fresh cut, we meet some new characters, get introduced to a subordinate conflict, solve that problem, and then -- screeeeeeeeeeech! -- slam on the brakes and cut back to the other half of the couple, ruining whatever momentum had been accumulated. After eight or ten repetitions, I couldn't help but feel that director Gore Verbinski is only the latest in the attention-deficit-disorder school of directing. There are some nice touches within these scenes (a phone conversation between Jerry and Samantha, an important recurring fascination with traffic lights), but they don't add up to much. Not helping matters were the obnoxious sepia-toned flashbacks wherein we see the variations to the cursed gun myth (complete with the totally inappropriate whiring and clicking of an old-school movie projector), and loads of wild 'n' wacky plot twists that most people will see coming a mile away. Oh, and there's also an unforgivably obtrusive product-placement gaffe involving Balaban and a bag of Doritos.
What makes the film worth seeing is James Galdofini as Leroy, the hooligan with a secret. I freely cop to the fact that I've never seen an episode of "The Sopranos," and therefore was largely unprepared for the excellence Galdofini would bring to this role. Leroy could have been just another stereotypical gangster character, but as inhabitated by Galdofini, he comes off as conflicted, tortured, and very, very human. Pitt and Roberts certainly look nice during their brief time together on the screen, but Galdofini is the real deal. In a movie that wants so badly to be postmodern and cool, Leroy is the living, breathing, romantic heart that shows what could have been.
Pollock (2000)
Dodging the biopic bullet
Films like "Pollock" always leave me at a loss when I have to describe them to others. For one thing, it's long been a labor of love for director / star Ed Harris, which maybe causes me to have more sympathy for the picture than I should -- after all, I'd hate to ream a project that he's spent so much time and energy developing. For another thing, I usually find biopics a bit crippled because, in most cases ("Pollock" included), I already know the plot, and without the plot to get lost in, I'm left to look at little things like, you know, the acting, writing and directing. Lucky for Harris (and my conscience), then, that the acting is uniformly great, the direction is mostly seamless (and downright kinetic at times), and the writing, while not being great in the "Casablanca" sense of the word, serves the story well. "Pollock" dodges all the pitfalls that often turn biopics into boring history lessons.
The film picks up with Jackson Pollock the Unsuccessful Drunk (Harris), dabbling in surrealist painting and proclaiming Picasso to be a fraud. There's enough promise in his work, though, for him to gain a girlfriend, Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden); a benefactor, Peggy Guggenheim (Amy Madigan); and a professional critic, Clement Greenberg (Jeffrey Tambor), who champions his work in print. From there we watch Pollock take the express train to art world superstardom, becoming one of the world's foremost abstract painters.
The fly in the ointment, though, is Pollock's notorious temper, aided and abetted by his equally notorious alcoholism. Life in New York City is doing his personal life no favors, so he and Krasner move to the countryside, and it's here that he stumbles upon his "drip method" of painting, granting him another wave of fame and recognition. It is this sequence, in which Pollock makes his pivotal discovery, where Harris's talent as a director comes to the fore. Although we're aware that we're watching an actor perform a discovery that was made by someone else more than fifty years ago, it's an exciting, dynamic moment as Harris dances around his canvas, flicking paint from his brush in a blur of motion. It doesn't come off as staged or phony, but as a moment of genuine discovery, and for those moments we might as well actually be watching Jackson Pollock revolutionize the art world.
From there, though, ego, alcohol, and the mechanics of change all prove to be Pollock's undoing, leading, of course, to his untimely demise. Through it all, Harris seethes with a feral intensity, giving a performance that should rightfully win him an Oscar (and check out the dramatic weight gain at the end. Tom who?). Harden, his co-nominee, is also excellent (although she's stuck uttering lines like, "You've done it, Pollock. You've cracked it wide open."). In lesser hands, Krasner could be just another version of the screeching, wailing, put-upon wife, but Harden bolsters the anguish with a fine layer of anger; the torment of a woman who loves the person causing her misery, but who is unwilling to let go of the principles which led her to enter and maintain the relationship on her own terms.
"Pollock" ultimately succeeds because we know how it will end, we clearly see how unpleasant and deluded the artist had become, and still we can't look away. Harris's labor of love serves as an auspicious debut for someone who, at this stage, seems just as skilled behind the camera as he is in front of it.
Down to Earth (2001)
This month just isn't getting any better
One of the more popular theories currently making its way through
the entertainment media is that the impending writers' and actors'
strike will result in unprecedented awfulness at the cinema. I'd
argue that the span of time represented by the strike couldn't
possibly produce anything worse than what's currently being
released during the month of February. Case in point: following
hot on the heels of "Saving Silverman" and "Valentine" comes
"Down to Earth," thus completing an unholy trinity of astounding
wretchedness.
Directed by Chris and Paul Weitz ("American Pie") with all the style
and grace of two brothers suddenly robbed of sight, hearing, and
motor skills, "Down to Earth" tells the story of Lance Barton (Chris
Rock), bicycle messenger by day, aspiring stand-up comedian by
night, who is killed a tenth of a second before his designated time
and is therefore allowed to return to earth in the only body available
to him that he finds acceptable: that of white millionaire Charles
Wellington. This body will only be a "loaner" until such time as a
corpse that Lance *really* likes turns up. Masterminding this
whole plot are angels played by the usually reliable Eugene Levy
and Chazz Palminteri, both of whom look exceedingly uncomfortable in their pastel-blue tuxedos, and as though they
wished they could be anywhere but in this movie.
Once Lance is stuck in Wellington's body, the movie can get on
with its real business: hooking Lance / Wellington up with the
beautiful, fiesty Santee (Regina King). This is no easy matter,
though, because as it turns out, Wellington is something of a
heartless S.O.B who wants to refuse patients' access to a hospital
he owns, and Santee is an advocate of those patients. But Lance,
immediately falling for Santee -- and ignoring the fact that he's now
an overweight, middle-aged white guy -- sees this as a chance to
woo Santee, and so he reverses the decisions made by his body's
previous owner. Limping along with that portion of the plot is
another part that sees Lance struggling (as Wellington) to win a
slot as one of the comedians performing at the closing of the
Apollo Theater. And adding to an already overloaded plate is the
scheme hatched by Wellington's cutthroat board of directors to
have their newly philanthropic boss rubbed out.
One of the main problems with the movie is the execution of the
big body switcheroo. Palminteri's angel tells Lance that everyone
will see and hear Wellington, but Lance will see and hear himself.
We see and hear him as Lance, too, except for when it's supposed
to be funny for us not to -- such as when Wellington raps or
performs at a predominantly African-American comedy club. This
is funny, see, because Lance is black and Wellington is white.
That's funny, right? Right? Well, actually, no. I laughed exactly
once in the movie's 87 minutes, and was immediately ashamed of
myself. We see Rock because the central conceit of the movie is
to play off the issue of race -- in essence, look how funny it is to
see an old white guy doing things stereotypically done by a young
black guy. And when that's the main reason to make a film,
alarms start ringing. In the end, it's insulting to both blacks and
whites.
To make matters worse, I have seldom been as embarrassed for
a cast as I was while watching this movie. Regina King
demonstrated none of the fire she had as Cuba Gooding Jr.'s wife
in "Jerry Maguire," stuck instead playing a character that's
supposedly got an iron will, but who falls in love with a paunchy,
jowly, middle-aged white man and repeats the line, "There's
something about your eyes" so many times I had to squelch the
urge to run home and grab my thesaurus so I could return to the
theater and throw it at the screen. Mark Addy, for me the most
likable character in "The Full Monty"'s eminently likable cast, plays
Wellington's butler. The joke is that he's supposed to be an
American sporting a British accent to seem more "butler-y." This
falls flat, though, because Addy's American accent is cringe-worthy, owing largely, I suspect, to the fact that Addy -- get
this -- isn't American! Wouldn't it make more sense to have an
American actor faking a British accent since that's, you know, the
character? Jennifer Coolidge, one of the funniest things in "Best in
Show," plays Wellington's philandering wife and made me want to
crawl under my seat in a thoroughly humiliating scene where she
decides to act "more black" in order to appeal to her suddenly
afrocentric husband. And Chris Rock, a comedian I find viciously,
painfully hysterical, is completely defanged here, uttering lines
which were greeted by the audience with the kind of silence I
usually only hear immediately following the phrase, "Please bow
your heads." The whole endeavor gave me the same creepy
feeling I got watching Woody Allen paw Elizabeth Shue in
"Deconstructing Harry."
I'm not sure what to chalk this failure up to, except maybe to the
fact that this is the third time this particular story has been told, first
as "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" and most recently with Warren Beatty
as "Heaven Can Wait." Remakes are rarely as good as the
original, and a second remake only removes the quality of the
original by another generation. Ultimately, I left "Down to Earth"
wondering only one thing: if the world sees and hears Wellington
as Wellington, why, when Santee reminisces about conversations
she had with him, does she hear Chris Rock's voice in her head?
Just a thought for this pre-strike February.
Sweet November (2001)
I tried to like it, honest
** SPOILERS TO FOLLOW, NOT THAT THEY'LL BE A SURPRISE IF YOU'VE SEEN A COMMERCIAL OR TRAILER **
I know there are people who swear by the notion of the chick flick. They claim that some movies, by virtue of their subject matter, can only be liked by women. I imagine, by that same reckoning, there are movies that can hypothetically only be liked by men. I've never really subscribed to either notion, though, choosing instead to believe that there are just good stories and bad stories, and good stories transcend gender lines to entertain us all. So when I heard people describing "Sweet November" as a chick flick before it had even been released, I went to see it with the firm intention of ignoring which gender it might appeal to more. How refreshing it was to walk out of the theater realizing that this is a movie that might not appeal to anyone.
In all honesty, like my little subject line says above, I tried to like this movie. I made the effort because I believed from the very beginning that the filmmakers' hearts were in the right place. I think they genuinely wanted to touch the audience emotionally, to give them characters and a situation they could relate to and empathize with. This wasn't crass, manipulative silliness like "Pay it Forward"; I feel like they made an effort to produce a nice movie, and for that I thank them. Unfortunately, their nice little movie was hijacked by cliche and the wet rag of melodrama, which came courtesy of not one, but two big emotional set pieces meant to leave the audience in tears, but instead just made me wonder, "Now how did Keanu get that dishwasher up the fire escape?"
But I get ahead of myself. Keanu Reeves plays Nelson Moss, a cutthroat ad exec who's embroiled in a campaign to add edge to a hot dog company's advertisements. Charlize Theron plays Sara Deever, a quasi-bohemian who rescues animals and strives to "help" a different man each month by having them live with her for that same period of time. The two of them meet in that hotbed of passion, the Department of Motor Vehicles, when Sara drops her bag of groceries, and Nelson chivalrously hands her an escaped sausage. As a side note, I'm sure Freud would have a field day with the abundance of hot dog / sausage imagery, but I'll refrain from such enterprises, choosing instead to believe, in this case, that a sausage is just a sausage. Following this precipitous meeting, Sara invites Nelson to become Mr. November. Nelson declines, but once he's fired and his girlfriend leaves him, he reconsiders and moves in with Sara pronto. At first Nelson wrestles with how wise an idea it is to move in with a woman who freely admits to sleeping with a different man each month in the name of personal assistance. I wrestled with it for a while, too, but then I had to admit that when Charlize Theron is offering herself to you, it would take a far better man than myself to say no.
And thus begins the long, slow slide into ugliness. To give the actors their due, part of my waffling on this film is due to their likability. Reeves has become such a running punchline that it came as a genuine surprise to see him attempting real emotional depth here. And Theron, despite her unfortunate choice of acting gigs ("The Astronaut's Wife" or "Mighty Joe Young," anyone?), remains one of the most underrated young female actors out there. And yes, as much as I almost hate to admit it, I wanted to see this couple work out, even though I knew where the movie was heading.
And where, pray tell, was it heading? As anyone who's seen the ad campaign knows, Theron is sick. Deathly sick. Movie sick. You know the kind I mean: pale, sweaty, circles under the eyes, crying, too weak to walk one minute, yet strong enough to sprint down the street the next wearing nothing but a camisole and a pair of boots. We see this progress throughout the film, first manifesting itself at a dinner party hosted by her gay friend Chas (Jason Isaacs, in a truly thankless role). As her illness worsens, we begin to understand her rationale for the "one man a month" sweepstakes: she wants to make the most of the time she has left by helping people. And again, I restate the fact that I wanted very much to like a movie that has as its central tenet, It's Important and Virtuous To Help Others.
But, in the end, what we have here is a movie that's just plain silly. The crowning moment comes in the first of the two big set pieces, when Nelson climbs through the window of Sara's upstairs apartment at Thanksgiving dinner, wearing a Santa Claus hat and toting a big bag of presents, all for Sara, and all based on things that have Major Significance in their relationship: dance lessons, trolley tokens, the previously mentioned dishwasher, and -- no kidding -- a bullwhip, to name but four. And then, the penultimate gift, Nelson in a white tuxedo, crooning a love song to Sara as she looks on adoringly. At which point I began praying for the quiet dignity of Reeves' performance in "Johnny Mnemonic."
It's all in here: Nelson's touching relationship with a neighborhood boy, his big league epiphany when he turns down a lucrative job offer with a prestigious ad firm, Reeves and Theron in the bathtub, Isaacs in a mint-green sequined dress. The everything and the kitchen sink approach isn't the movie's sole undoing (there is, of course, the utter unbelievability of the main concept to deal with), but it didn't help. By the end, with Reeves reaching out into nothingness, the lump in my throat was only due to the fact that I couldn't possibly swallow any more of what the film wanted me to eat.
Hannibal (2001)
Poor source material strikes again
Conventional wisdom holds that it's nearly impossible to make a quality movie out of a bad screenplay. By that same reckoning, it's nearly impossible to write a quality screenplay that's based on a poor book, even when that screenplay is written by celebrated writers David Mamet and Steven Zaillian. In that case, "Hannibal" was doomed from the very start. That's not to say it's unwatchable or even, truth to tell, bad. Not exactly. Director Ridley Scott did the absolute best he could with the material he was given. If that sounds like a back-handed compliment, it is. The film picks up 10 years after "Silence of the Lambs," and it stays remarkably faithful to the novel it's based upon. The plot centers on a violent revenge concocted by Hannibal Lecter's sole surviving victim, Mason Verger, to capture the good doctor and make sure he gets his just desserts, so to speak. This is interspersed with scenes of FBI agent Clarice Starling attempting to track down Lecter before Verger is able to execute his plan. Throw in a gold-digging Italian detective, a depressed Starling, and a boatload of pigs, and you've got a story that is both more violent and more sensational than its predecessor. But for all its ambition and large-scale, intercontinental action, the story simply isn't as engaging this time around. Even though it's tiresome to compare "Hannibal" with the far superior "Silence," I'm going to do it anyway, but only in terms of story, which points to specifically why "Hannibal" didn't work for me: 1) Anthony Hopkins gives another outstanding performance as Hannibal Lecter, but this time around he's just another predator, slicing up the opposition. In "Silence," trapped behind glass, he had no choice but to play devious cat and mouse games with Starling which simultaneously charmed and repulsed us; here, set free in the world, we know precisely what he's after and he spends most of the movie pursuing it. In that way, "Hannibal" is an action movie without much action, and a character as fascinating as Lecter (and he *is* fascinating, although you wouldn't know it from this film) simply isn't well-served by a plot as straightforward as this one; he's far more intriguing while spinning the labyrinthine plot threads of "Silence." 2) In "Silence," we watched Starling grow and develop as a character, and we were rooting for her. When she initially faced Lecter, we felt her fear and discomfort as our own, and as she gradually proved herself to be the equal of her superiors and earned Lecter's respect, we grew with her. In "Hannibal," though, we're given a much different Starling: depressed, relegated to a basement office, and on the verge of being fired. I didn't miss Jodie Foster, but I wasn't exactly blown away by Julianne Moore, either. This isn't Moore's fault; the fact is, Starling isn't given that much to do. She acts sad. She yells a little. She goes jogging. She shoots a gun. She stumbles around a darkened house in an evening gown. This isn't Zaillian's or Mamet's fault, either. Harris wrote a cynical, bitter Starling in his novel, and a cynical, bitter Starling just isn't as endearing as the ambitious, optimisitic Starling in "Silence." 3) Finally, I think I objected most to the sensational nature of the story. That's not to say I was offended by the violence of Verger's revenge or the over-the-top confrontation between Starling and Lecter at the end (which I won't detail here at the risk of spoiling things). The main difficulty posed for me was one of tone. I had problems cutting between scenes of Lecter in Italy which had a genuine creepiness and scenes of Verger in Virginia which played out with a sort of over-exaggerated Snidely Whiplash melodrama. I mean, just how spooky *are* pigs when you get right down to it? I don't know how this problem could have been side-stepped by Scott, though. This sensationalism is inherent in the very devices of the plot, and only a wholesale disembowelment of that plot could remove it. But then nothing would be accomplished other than creating a film that bears no similarity to its source, and I've seen one too many of those to wish that fate on Harris or Scott. Which is why I say that the problems of "Hannibal" are problems of the book, and not necessarily of the film. Ultimately, "Hannibal" is beautifully shot and well-acted, but it just doesn't add up to much, unlike "Silence of the Lambs." This constant comparison isn't saying that Ted Tally is a better screenwriter, or Jonathan Demme is a better director, or Jodie Foster makes a better Starling. What it *is* saying is that Thomas Harris wrote an inferior sequel, and as long as faithfulness to the source was the goal, Scott and Co. were doomed to inherit that inferiority.
Saving Silverman (2001)
Oh, dear
How many different ways are there for movie characters to fall down? "Saving Silverman" flies in the face of logic by using its 90 minutes to bravely answer that question. Characters trip over curbs, crash down stairs, plummet out of windows, fall off bridges, and demolish automobiles from great heights. One might reasonably assume that director Dennis Dugan discovered the existence (and great juvenile fun) of gravity while making this film. One might also argue that "Saving Silverman" is an entertaining descendent of The Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello, just another in that long and glorious line of movies celebrating physical slapstick. I am not one of those people. The story, in brief (** AND YES, THERE ARE POTENTIAL SPOILERS TO FOLLOW **): Boy meets girl. girl turns out to be castrating, cold-hearted dominatrix and makes boy give up his friends. Boy's friends kidnap girl. Hilarity ensues. Watching this movie, I wasn't sure whether to feel sorry for the actors, or be angry at them for prostituting their talent for a quick paycheck. Jack Black and Steve Zahn, so terrific in "High Fidelity" and "Happy, Texas," respectively, are merely recycling those characters here without any discernible attempts at, you know, a little thing like believable human behavior. Amanda Peet, all ditzy-cool in "The Whole Nine Yards," plays Judith, a character whose lack of any human emotion other than anger (and, briefly, arousal) is so central to the movie's plot that it deserved to be dealt with in a more prominent fashion than with a kooky flashback that is distinctive only because it probably managed to offend both Asians *and* kickboxers. Jason Biggs, as the victimized Darren, oozes puppy-dog charm, but like his buddies Black and Zahn, this is too similar to what we've seen him do before in "American Pie" and "Loser." And Neil Diamond ... well, what can one possibly say about Neil Diamond? This is surely the finest cameo by a musician since Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains played the Kinko's clerk in "Jerry Maguire." The problem - as difficult as it is to choose just one - rests with the screenplay. We're supposed to believe that Darren is madly in love with Judith, that he's willing to marry her, that he'd give up his friends for her, and yet we never see one moment of interaction between the two of them that would in any way suggest the relationship could possibly be worth enough to Darren to give up all he previously held dear. There isn't even, to be completely crass, a sexual relationship to speak of. What we're expected to believe is that Judith is beautiful, and therefore Darren will put up with her nagging, yelling, haranguing, and constant criticism; he'll turn his back on the friends he's had since elementary school; he'll quit the band he loves; he'll even endure - wait for it - buttock implants. I'm all for the suspension of disbelief, but I was afraid if I suspended mine to the extreme this movie requires, I might never get it back. By the end of the film, when Zahn's character Wayne slugs Judith to "comic" effect (are you laughing as hard as I am?), I wasn't sure whether this was a movie that was supposed to point to males as being dopey fools for a beautiful face, or a misogynistic piece of slop masquerading as a feel-good comedy where everyone ends up with his / her true love. If it had been the former, I might have been willing to give "Saving Silverman" the benefit of the doubt. Unfortunately, I couldn't help feeling that Dugan, along with writers Hank Nelken and Greg DePaul, had a toolshed full of axes to grind with some beautiful women in their pasts, and we're privileged enough to get to watch their psychotherapy play out on the big screen.
Saving graces for people who have to see something because "Hannibal" was sold out: R. Lee Ermey is funny as R. Lee Ermey, Amanda Detmer has a not-quite-obnoxious perkiness to her as Darren's high school crush, and Neil Diamond doesn't sing "You Don't Bring Me Flowers." Too bad those three things couldn't offset the crime against humanity embodied by the zany cursing nuns. And to think they're predicting *really* bad movies if the writers and actors go on strike later this year. I'm going to start building my bomb shelter in preparation ...