Plot: What’s it about?
A character study of a group of friends from the “Hollywood” scene whose overindulgence in everything from drugs, sex and self-absorption creates a world of addiction, non-satisfaction and self-doubt. Roommates Eddie (Sean Penn) and Mickey (Kevin Spacey) continue their morning tΩte-α-tΩte on cell phones as they drive to work stopping only to walk into the same building and sit at their opposing desks in the same office and…you guessed it…keep right on arguing. If these two descendants of Felix and Oscar aren’t strange enough, in comes Phil (Chazz Palminteri), a macho loser actor type who has a penchant for violence but whines at the drop of a hat about his own personal demons. Only when tragedy strikes do we see these “friends” take a good look at the wasteland that makes up their everyday existence. Is it enough for some of them to realize that life has more to offer or is it just a momentary stop on a runaway train to…failure.
This review was requested by a reader and because of that I continued watching this movie when I would have normally turned it off. I decided to dig a bit deeper to understand the transformation from critically acclaimed play to mediocre movie. I activated the commentary by Anthony Drazan (director and producer) and David Rabe (writer of the play and movie) to gain some insight of the direction they expected the movie to take. Although I didn’t see the play it was obvious from the commentary that Drazan and Rabe both thought the impact of a powerful stage performance (Penn, who was in the play) and the flexibility of film…you couldn’t do the scene where Eddie and Mickey talk on cell phones driving in separate cars…would combine to give film audiences the same vitality experienced from a Broadway play. Unfortunately that didn’t happen here, possibly because the transition from scene to scene is expected to be a brief pause in the flow of a play, where a movie requires more continuity between characters, script and scene changes since it is virtually non-stop and Rabe didn’t know how to keep the that flow happening.
With a collection of accomplished actors this movie has the luxury of I was extremely disappointed in the film. Meg Ryan was totally miscast as Bonnie, a semi exotic dancer who feels because she uses a balloon as a prop she’s more artist than stripper. I think that Rabe could learn some valuable lessons from Chazz Palminteri who successfully crossed over his own sold out New York one-man play, A Bronx Tale (which he wrote) to the big screen movie (he wrote the screenplay) of the same name. Granted, Palminteri was fortunate enough to have Robert De Niro as actor and director…De Niro’s directorial debut in a feature film…in his movie but good choices make good movies. As much genius Martin Scorsese brings to a film, his respect of De Niro’s artistic input beyond that as an actor has been the catalyst for many great moments in their many films together and Palminteri and his screenplay were just as fortunate.
Video: How does it look?
Hurlyburly comes in Enhanced Widescreen only…the script could have used some of that enhancement…and transfers well to the DVD format.
Audio: How does it sound?
Dialogue driven through 99% of the film the 5.1 is unused until the end during the credits when Sheryl Crow lets loose with “There Goes The Neighborhood” which instinctively caused my finger to increase the volume a tenfold…well at least a sevenfold.
Supplements: What are the extras?
If it wasn’t for the feature length commentaries I would never have been able to research this movie quite so in depth. Unfortunately it didn’t make the movie any better; it just took three times as long to see it.
