This is the most ridiculously overpraised piece of crap of the year. First of all, it's only about seventy minutes long without credits -- not that I was complaining by the end -- which is pretty insulting in the era of $10 movie tickets. Second, the camerawork makes Woody Allen's "Husband and Wives" feel positively stable by comparison. It's truly headache-inducing.
There's a lot to hate about this movie, but most of all is that it takes place entirely in Movieland, where every character has one or more supposedly endearing or interesting eccentricities and ten times too much dialogue -- all of it screaming "SCRIPT!" --, every moment is laden with unlikely action and silly melodrama, and nothing anybody says or does bears any resemblance to the real world.
The baby-faced Katie Holmes as a druggie is only the beginning. Next comes the black woman whose initial response to Holmes at her apartment door rings completely false. Then the effete upstairs neighbor who behaves unlike anybody on Planet Earth. And the list goes on and on and on -- it's really amazing how much falsehood has been crammed into so little running time.
The stuff with April's family is just painful to watch and rings false from the first second to the last. Patricia Clarkson gets the one and only laugh in the picture when she has her husband stop the car, gets out, and without saying a word crosses the highway and sticks out her thumb to hitchhike in the opposite direction. The idea that this is an award-worthy performance is an insult, not least of all to Clarkson. Everybody else, you just feel sad for, including yourself.
There's a lot to hate about this movie, but most of all is that it takes place entirely in Movieland, where every character has one or more supposedly endearing or interesting eccentricities and ten times too much dialogue -- all of it screaming "SCRIPT!" --, every moment is laden with unlikely action and silly melodrama, and nothing anybody says or does bears any resemblance to the real world.
The baby-faced Katie Holmes as a druggie is only the beginning. Next comes the black woman whose initial response to Holmes at her apartment door rings completely false. Then the effete upstairs neighbor who behaves unlike anybody on Planet Earth. And the list goes on and on and on -- it's really amazing how much falsehood has been crammed into so little running time.
The stuff with April's family is just painful to watch and rings false from the first second to the last. Patricia Clarkson gets the one and only laugh in the picture when she has her husband stop the car, gets out, and without saying a word crosses the highway and sticks out her thumb to hitchhike in the opposite direction. The idea that this is an award-worthy performance is an insult, not least of all to Clarkson. Everybody else, you just feel sad for, including yourself.