What the hell did I just watch? Seriously, what the hell did I just watch? I'm trying to come up with a way to describe this movie and the only thing I've got is
what the hell did I just watch?
Phil and Anna (David Aaron Baker and Mary McCormack) are a New York City couple living inside a meat locker of a marriage. They barely even acknowledge each other's presence and as the movie begins, we find out that Phil and Anna are cheating on each other. Anna tells her incompetent therapist (Stockard Channing) that she's seeing another man and Phil tells his indestructible a-hole of a best friend (Campbell Scott) that he's seeing another woman. Anna also spills her guts about her lifeless union to her high strung brother with Tourette 's syndrome (Rob Morrow). An inexplicably French private investigator (Peter Gallagher) gets involved, there's a scene in a night club with a punk rock band that has a bald, fat lead singer in a neck brace and a diaper, Mary McCormack does NOT get naked and the secret of Phil and Anna's adulterous relationships turns out to defy both explanation and understanding.
A lot of films have twists and I shy away from spoiling them in these reviews unless the movie is so gosh awful I feel it's necessary to remove any possible temptation to watch it. Other Voices is bewildering instead of bad, but I couldn't spoil the twist in this story even if I wanted to. That's because if I told you exactly what the twist was, you wouldn't believe me. I mean, I've seen a lot of nonsensical plot developments but this one pretty much takes the cake. The reveal of this secret is like mashing up South Park with The Empire Strikes Back and finding out that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's hermaphrodite mother.
This movie isn't without redeeming qualities. Jason Campbell is fun to watch as Phil's unrelenting jerkwad of a best friend. He masterfully portrays the sort of foul-mouthed, douchebag that you can't imagine was ever anything but the joyfully horrible creature that he is right now. He's like Dan Fielding from Night Court after smoking a big bag of meth. People like that are unbearable in real life but are a lot of fun to watch from a distance in fiction. Rob Morrow also does a nice job as Anna's brother, making all of his involuntary starts and ticks seem like completely natural parts of the character. I also found Peter Gallagher doing a mediocre French accent pretty amusing for some reason.
That's about it for the positives. David Aaron Baker spends 90% of the film with the same pained expression on his face. Stockard Channing seems more like someone who needs therapy than an actress playing a therapist. There's an out-of-left-field Hitchcock homage. Gallagher spends an inordinate amount of screen time wearing the Gortex hat from that Seinfeld episode. And it appears as though an early draft of the screenplay had some sort of subplot involving a protest against urban redevelopment, but about 98% of it was apparently cut out of the final script.
Other Voices almost defies classification. What it reminds me of is watching a foreign film and getting lost in the different emotional tones and social references of an alien culture. Maybe this is an accurate picture of how people live in New York City. Maybe the whole thing is just an extended brain fart from writer/director Dan McCormack. I don't know which it is, only that you shouldn't waste your time on this film.
Phil and Anna (David Aaron Baker and Mary McCormack) are a New York City couple living inside a meat locker of a marriage. They barely even acknowledge each other's presence and as the movie begins, we find out that Phil and Anna are cheating on each other. Anna tells her incompetent therapist (Stockard Channing) that she's seeing another man and Phil tells his indestructible a-hole of a best friend (Campbell Scott) that he's seeing another woman. Anna also spills her guts about her lifeless union to her high strung brother with Tourette 's syndrome (Rob Morrow). An inexplicably French private investigator (Peter Gallagher) gets involved, there's a scene in a night club with a punk rock band that has a bald, fat lead singer in a neck brace and a diaper, Mary McCormack does NOT get naked and the secret of Phil and Anna's adulterous relationships turns out to defy both explanation and understanding.
A lot of films have twists and I shy away from spoiling them in these reviews unless the movie is so gosh awful I feel it's necessary to remove any possible temptation to watch it. Other Voices is bewildering instead of bad, but I couldn't spoil the twist in this story even if I wanted to. That's because if I told you exactly what the twist was, you wouldn't believe me. I mean, I've seen a lot of nonsensical plot developments but this one pretty much takes the cake. The reveal of this secret is like mashing up South Park with The Empire Strikes Back and finding out that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's hermaphrodite mother.
This movie isn't without redeeming qualities. Jason Campbell is fun to watch as Phil's unrelenting jerkwad of a best friend. He masterfully portrays the sort of foul-mouthed, douchebag that you can't imagine was ever anything but the joyfully horrible creature that he is right now. He's like Dan Fielding from Night Court after smoking a big bag of meth. People like that are unbearable in real life but are a lot of fun to watch from a distance in fiction. Rob Morrow also does a nice job as Anna's brother, making all of his involuntary starts and ticks seem like completely natural parts of the character. I also found Peter Gallagher doing a mediocre French accent pretty amusing for some reason.
That's about it for the positives. David Aaron Baker spends 90% of the film with the same pained expression on his face. Stockard Channing seems more like someone who needs therapy than an actress playing a therapist. There's an out-of-left-field Hitchcock homage. Gallagher spends an inordinate amount of screen time wearing the Gortex hat from that Seinfeld episode. And it appears as though an early draft of the screenplay had some sort of subplot involving a protest against urban redevelopment, but about 98% of it was apparently cut out of the final script.
Other Voices almost defies classification. What it reminds me of is watching a foreign film and getting lost in the different emotional tones and social references of an alien culture. Maybe this is an accurate picture of how people live in New York City. Maybe the whole thing is just an extended brain fart from writer/director Dan McCormack. I don't know which it is, only that you shouldn't waste your time on this film.