It's about a quartet of loathesome lowlifes: Eddie (Sean Penn, who goes up to 11) and his friend, roommate, and co-worker Mickey (Kevin Spacey), who are casting agents, psychotic Phil (Chazz Palminteri), a failed actor, and Artie (the underused Gary Shandling). They talk and talk at (rather than to) each other, squabbling over semantic points (my favorite was Spacey expounding on the distinction between "flip" and "sarcastic"), and a lot of the dialogue makes no sense (to misquote "The Simpsons": I know what all those words mean, but that sentence doesn't make any sense). Sometimes even they seem weary of their babble; Eddie frequently ellipses his stream of chatter with "blah blah blah."
They're all incredibly misogynistic, calling all women "bitches" -- funny, I think I went home with one of them on Christmas. One woman, the unrecognizable Anna Paquin (the moppet from The Piano), literally is treated as an object: Artie brings her to Eddie and Mickey's house, casually saying, "I found her in an elevator. Do you guys want her? I have no use for her." All the women in the movie -- Paquin, Robin Wright Penn, and Meg Ryan (as a junkie hooker, which she pulls off semi-believably until she wrinkles up her face into one of her cutesy pouts) -- seem to sleep with anyone they meet and seem to like hanging out with these losers. I'm not sure why this didn't bother me more -- maybe because the men were so obviously reprehensible that their misogyny didn't seem gratutious. The exception is the abusive Phil, who enjoys smacking women around. I can't remember the last time I rooted so hard for a character to die -- I didn't just want him to be off-screen, I wanted him to DIE. When he said he was suicidal, I practically applauded.
It is sort of hard to watch a movie with absolutely no redeeming characters. Eddie, newly sober, gets hit with a realization of what a shit he is, but he immediately snorts a line of coke to blot out his epiphany. Still, it's really funny and smart, and the actors are all terrific, Penn and Spacey especially. I recommend it.
Back to homepage
Reviews A to F
Reviews G to L
Reviews M to R
Reviews S to Z
Search