For a comedy, this movie gets extraordinarily bitter at times. That, in theory, should make me love it, but even I found it far too uncomfortably true-to-life regarding the bitching that’s thrown around. It makes the movie unique, for sure, like most of director Ted Demme’s work; but it’s by no means up there with Beautiful Girls or Blow, despite a cast that includes Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary, and the names of Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer (if only as executive producers) in the credits, back when they were both alive and good.

Certain scenes work brilliantly, and at times the comedy gets a chance to be purely comic; somewhat of a blending of the Swedish Festen and American Beauty. The performances, particularly from Leary and Spacey, are, not surprisingly, great; perhaps in Judy Davis’ case, too great: it’s from her springs a lot of the extreme bitterness.

It’s overall far too bitter, though, offering no real entry for connection. Of course, I probably wouldn’t even find this movie interesting let alone like it if it went the pure slapstick comedy route; but I’m sure it would be a better movie if it had.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 21st, 2004 at 10:52 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.