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Directed by: Frank Whaley Starring: Frank Whaley, Carla Gugino, Ethan Hawke Now here's a film for people who thought "Death of a Salesman" was too cheery, so saturated with proletarian angst I half expect its writer to pack his poo poo, move to Los Angeles and write wrestlin' pictures. If you want an idea of how this movie plays out, here it is: It's a rewrite of Arthur Miller's classic in which the producer has taken from Willy Loman a wife who loves him and an otherwise balanced family life, sprinkled some sexual frustrations and conflicts that weren't often addressed in the 1950s, given Loman a self-destructive streak that makes it impossible for the audience to empathize with him, and hired an inexperienced "auteur" (Whaley himself) to direct a mediocre film version...that isn't even distributed in widescreen. This movie is so awful at times it plays like a near parody of itself and other sad-sap working-class movies like it. Let's see: guy's supporting himself and his ailing grandmother, guy knocks up high school sweetheart, guy marries her, guy pursues a profession he's obviously no good at (in this case, comedy), guy barely holds onto a janitorial job at a supermarket before he starts showing up to work an hour late and stealing cases of beer, guy becomes an alcoholic, guy starts ditching his child for amateur night at the comedy club, guy loses job, guy takes out his frustration on the wait staff at some lovely restaurant to which he takes his wife for their anniversary dinner, guy's grandmother becomes an alcoholic, guy's wife leaves him with child in tow, guy goes through series of jobs, guy treats the customers like poo poo and embezzles from the cash register of any company unfortunate enough to hire him, guy is still no good at comedy, guy dies. Well, he doesn't actually die in the movie, but you get where this is headed and I'm pretty sure I left out half a dozen sad-sap working-class plot mechanisms, so including that sort of makes up for the absence. This movie has only one memorable moment, when a female heckler yells "YOU'RE NOT FUNNY!" and he responds, "Oh, I'm sorry. You must be looking for the comedy club. Well, this is the tragedy club. The comedy club's a couple blocks down the—aww, gently caress it." It's a one-note movie, poorly played and redundant anyway. RATING: 0.5 (Changed my vote from 1.0 the day after; there was nothing good about this movie.) PROS: None come to mind CONS: Poorly written characters, derivative, undeservingly bleak, uncomfortable to watch, boring, dense with clichĂ©s, etc., etc., etc. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0271020/ Keanu Grieves fucked around with this message at 09:01 on Nov 10, 2005 |
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Nov 9, 2005 05:14
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