Cinema
Releases - March 9, 2001
Best in
Show
***
Certificate 12. 90 minutes. Directed by Christopher
Guest. Written by Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy. Starring Christopher Guest,
Parker Posey, Michael Hitchcock, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, John Michael
Higgins, Michael McKean.
Born
Romantic
*
Certificate 15. 95 minutes. Written and directed
by David Kane. Starring Craig Ferguson, Ian Hart, Jane Horrocks, Adrian Lester,
Catherine McCormack, Jimi Mistry, David Morrissey, Olivia
Williams.
Not only is "Born Romantic" a dull,
dead and depressing movie in which a bunch of idiots plod through dreadfully
unfunny and unromantic romances, but it also features salsa classes. I do
not have an intrinsic objection to salsa, but the person I attended the screening
with found it rather attractive, and now wants me to go to lessons and learn
the dance with her. O, the trauma Ukey goes through in bringing you these
reviews!
What we have here is an amateurish British comedy
photographed so poorly that a grimy pall hangs over every one of its frames,
discouraging us from the start. Night and day scenes both, "Born Romantic"
looks dark and gloomy, more befitting a movie about nuclear fallout than
lonely Londoners trying to get a date.
The other big kiss of death is how unlikeable
these people are. Craig Ferguson plays a divorcee who likes to dress in 1950s
suits and listen to Rat Pack tunes -- he seems to have a sense of style,
until we see him chat up women and he talks in sleazy 'how about it?' come-ons.
Olivia Williams is his object of desire, one of those gorgeous women who
knows she's gorgeous and is determined to be a bitch about it, putting men
down if they dare to come near her. Jane Horrocks is a self-confessed slut
from the North West whose idea of a Scouse accent is to squeak like a strangled
Muppet; Jimi Mistry plays a rambling drunkard who went out with her twenty
years ago, tracks her down and starts asking her to marry him. The beautiful
Catherine McCormack has been made so dowdy for her role she's unrecognisable,
playing a withdrawn geek who makes a living tarting up gravestones with flower
arrangements designed for Spanish street parades; she ends up dating a shifty
hobo who mugs women by dragging them into alleyways and smothering them with
handkerchiefs doused in toxic chemicals. I guess we're supposed to think
he's just misunderstood.
These are repulsive characters. They are not a
down-to-earth cross-section of London's singles population, which is how
the movie paints them. The dialogue is phoney, the actors give strained,
aggravated, overreaching performances, and the jokes are the sort of tired
crap we see too much of on British TV, so I don't see why we should be subjected
to it in the cinema, too. Occasionally a line will make us gasp with desperate
laughter, as when Horrocks asks a cabbie "Do you fancy a coffee?", he answers
"I don't drink coffee," and she resorts to "Alright then, do you fancy a
shag??"
I hasten to add that he politely declines, being
a benevolent, all-knowing figure who rides through the night overseeing all
with a saintly glow. Don't you just love the patronising cliché of
movies with no black characters except the obscure one in the background
who sits removed from the action making wise insights? ("The Legend of Bagger
Vance" is exempt from this criticism; you would not find blacks among the
golfing community of 1920s Georgia, and the casting of Will Smith as the
pseudo-angel is less a cliché than an inventive way to include some
ethnicity and a respectful nod to the wisdom of black
Southerners.)
We also get distracting random cutaways to two
other cabbies who lounge in a café talking in sexist clichés
about love and romance -- their role has the form of a Greek chorus homage,
but the comments made do not relate to the film's stories, so it's really
just an excuse for the writer and director, David Kane, to show he knows
a lot of vulgar jokes and has overheard a lot of bitter old men in
pubs.
But chiefly annoying, of course, are those idiotic
characters and that incompetent filmmaking. About halfway through "Born Romantic"
I sunk into my seat, realising that by the time the credits rolled, all these
mist-covered morons would have paired off and I'd be going home
alone.
.
"Best in Show" is a much cheerier
affair, a comedy directed by and featuring "This is Spinal Tap" co-creator
Christopher Guest that really shouldn't work but somehow does. The film is
a good-hearted send-up of dog owners, dealing with the parts their animals
play in their lives and the obsessive preparations they make to ensure chances
at winning something at the national dog show.
The first major flaw of the movie is how easy
its targets are -- fanatics, camp gay men, yuppies, bimbos. The other big
distraction is the uneasy way Guest mixes scenes pretending to be documentary
footage with scenes that don't -- wasn't that problem the main reason why
so many people hated "Drop Dead Gorgeous"?
On the other hand, there's the inescapable fact
that I laughed. I laughed loud, and I laughed a lot. Maybe it's because of
the determined way Guest keeps on spoofing his subjects. Maybe it's the
wonderfully eccentric acting of reliable performers like Eugene Levy, Catherine
O'Hara and Michael McKean -- players whose very presence on a screen inspires
audiences to smile. Or maybe it's just that you go into a Christopher Guest
movie determined to do some giggling. Whatever the reason, I found "Best
in Show" funny, my fellow audience members seemed to agree, and so do my
fellow critics. There must be something to it.
COPYRIGHT©
2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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