It’s taken me a little while to put together this review (and I’m rushing it because I’m about to go out of town and, more importantly, I don’t want anyone else to beat me to the punch) – I enjoyed the hell out of this film, but I don’t want to be too swoony about it, because I was tapping my foot impatiently from time to time and, frankly, it doesn’t pay to dig too far beneath the snappy surface. Nevertheless, Confessions probably makes my list of top films of the year (maybe I’ll put together an official list in reaction to the Oscar nominations announcement on Feb. 11).
I think there’s less to Barris than maybe the moviemakers like to think, and you come away from it without much sense of him beyond that he’s kind of a dick but has one hell of an imagination. Watching the movie, I couldn’t help thinking of The Kid Stays in the Picture, I suppose because both Robert Evans and Barris are bombastic self-promoters who created long-lasting impacts on our culture (not always for the better: the auditions for “The Gong Show” in Confessions look almost exactly like “American Idol”), went through one or more periods of darkness and despair, are celebrated as much for their longevity as for any accomplishment, overinflate their life stories with little to no substantiation, and generally balance braggadocio with less-than-sincere self-deprecation.
I don’t mean to imply that the film is all style with no substance, either, but the style is brilliant. To give you an idea of the guiding aesthetic, this movie’s got an Elvis impersonator and the dogs-playing-poker pictures (the whole set!). I think that alone tells you how much I dig this film. The décor is just fabulous – I mean, you’ve got the atomic ‘50s, the hippie ‘60s, and the schlocky ‘70s. It’s like I imagine heaven would be! (I want the furniture from the ‘50s, the tchotchkes from the ‘70s, and… okay, well, nothing from the ‘60s, really.)
Beyond just the set decoration, the movie is a visual joy (though I’m not nuts about the weird processing that makes the film look washed out much of the time). It’s just so much damn fun to watch. Looking at the folks involved – screenwriter Kaufman and producer Steven Soderbergh – my first reaction when I heard about this film was, “Why isn’t Spike Jonze or Soderbergh directing?” But George Clooney acquits himself awfully well in his directorial debut; certainly, he’s a lot more daring and inventive than many first-time directors, especially those who already have a public image to think about, would be (or would be allowed to be). (He probably should have rethought casting himself as Barris’ CIA contact, though – he doesn’t add much, and he doesn’t even look all that good with his dippy fake mustache.)
I don’t know who’s to thank for this – Clooney, Soderbergh, the cinematographer, the editor – but the movie contains some amazingly filmed scenes. The technical jargon is beyond me, but there are several clever sequences with shifting backgrounds, long takes, and neat camera moves that are just plain fun. One in particular, a witty, perfectly choreographed, single-take scene that compresses months of Barris’ career at NBC into a few minutes, is just outstanding, moving with the fluidity and snappiness of the best screwball comedies. I’d love to see this movie again just for the sheer joy of watching giddy, dazzling scenes like that.
Clooney and Soderbergh recruited many of their buddies to take part, sometimes to good effect (Brad Pitt and Matt Damon – in bad wigs – are contestants on “The Dating Game” … and the unfortunate young woman selects Bachelor #3, a puffy-faced dork), sometimes not so much (Julia Roberts achieves the amazing feat of overplaying her secret-agent seductress role while simultaneously phoning it in). Rutger Hauer is terrific as a melancholy German agent, and Drew Barrymore’s just cute as a button as Barris’ devoted girlfriend. Sam Rockwell is great fun as Barris (who Jon Stewart just described as “bat-shit insane” – le mot juste – while interviewing Rockwell on “The Daily Show”), loose and loopy, but I’d hoped for a deeper performance. As I said, Barris is a fantastic character on the surface, but there’s gotta be something beneath the surface, no?
Eventually, the film bogs down in the cloak-and-dagger stuff and becomes disjointed and hallucinatory, a little bit like Adaptation but without the whole “making sense in the context of the movie” thing. It’s just kind of trippy and overly dramatic – although that’s an accurate portrayal of Barris at that point in the story, he seems to recover from it awfully quickly. Fortunately, that’s only for ten or twenty minutes near the end, and then we’re treated to George Clooney in the world’s ugliest tuxedo. No, I mean, we’re treated to a pitch-perfect endcap (with a killer last line) from the real Barris, who manages to be both rueful and proud.
I never saw
“The Gong Show” – we weren’t allowed to watch much TV growing
up – but after seeing bits of it in the movie (including all the
essentials,
evidently: Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, the Unknown Comic, Jaye
P. Morgan, Jamie Farr) and hearing Amy describe to me episodes she saw
on a recent Game
Show
Network marathon, I am so, so sorry I never did. (Well, the “E!
True Hollywood Story” of the show is on this weekend. My VCR
is set!)
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