High Heels and Low Lifes
*
Cinema
Releases - July 20, 2001
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 12. 85
minutes. Directed by Mel Smith. Written by Kim Fuller; from a story by Fuller
and Georgia Pritchett. Starring Minnie Driver, Mary McCormack, Kevin McNally,
Mark Williams, Danny Dyer, Michael Gambon.
I'm picturing the studio pitch for "High
Heels and Low Lifes". I'm picturing the writer sitting there saying,
"It's like 'Beautiful Creatures' meets 'Parting Shots'!" Unfortunately those
are two of the worst movies of recent years -- whoever gave the green light
to this project should be exiled to a condemned prison and locked in the
hole.
Like "Beautiful Creatures", the movie is an unfunny
comedy about two sexy women who get themselves in trouble and find themselves
having to avoid cops and outsmart crooks. Minnie Driver plays a London nurse,
Mary McCormack plays her best friend, a struggling American actress. One
night the girls are fiddling with surveillance equipment owned by Driver's
ex-boyfriend, and they stumble upon the plotting of some local gangsters.
They go to take their information to the police, get tired of waiting in
the crowded station, and end up devising a reeeally plausible scheme to extort
a million quid from the criminals.
The aura of the movie is like "Parting Shots"
in that it is tacky, full of dated humour, uncontainably lame. The gags involve
mistaken identity, chases, and various other devices that are borrowed from
Ealing but were getting to be clichés in the time of Shakespeare.
There is godawful Muzak on the soundtrack. And here's a dialogue sample:
"Where's my jacket?" "You're wearing it!"
"High Heels and Low Lifes" is like one of those
"Confessions of a Window Cleaner" type movies, without the sex -- which is
a shame, as Driver and McCormack are two of the most glorious female specimens
that will ever be filmed. This is a movie that even environmental activists
would be keen to burn. It is exactly what you'd expect from the director
of "Bean" and the writer of "Spiceworld". As I type all this, a documentary
about Bernard Manning is playing on television, and I'm finding his comedy
funnier than the movie I'm reviewing. I should also add that in the long
history of the English language, the word 'lifes' has never
existed.
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2001 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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