Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact


Catch and Release

Nearly a year after its originally scheduled release date, this Jennifer Garner vehicle is being released into theaters for what I can only imagine will be a brief swim on its way to heavy rotation on the Lifetime Channel, where it can only be improved by periodic breaks for commercials hawking Vagisil, Depends and Senekot. An alternately (and sometimes simultaneously) clichéd and offensive romantic comedy about a woman who learns her late fiancee’s secrets while sharing a house with his three best friends, this was reportedly withheld from release until the pregnant Garner gave birth and reshoots could be done. (Which implies that there was an earlier version of this that was even worse.) Catch and Release marks the directorial debut of Susannah Grant, screenwriter of In Her Shoes and Erin Brockovich. She also wrote this script, which makes it clear who is to blame for the preposterous plotting and characters that are either undeserving of sympathy or denied the sympathy they deserve. Garner seems to be trying to prove she can act by looking relentlessly homely, but the truly painful performance comes from Clerks director Kevin Smith: Never a slim fellow at best, he is seldom if ever seen without his mouth full or about to be filled. (If he hoped to make a point about Hollywood’s representation of overweight characters, it’s negated by a script that makes him the eunuch in a palace of horndogs.) This being the week in which many viewers will be heading out to see the movies anointed by the god Oscar, it’s no surprise that Hollywood uses it to let out the stinkers it’s contractually obligated to promote (though at least the studio had enough faith in it to preview it for the press, which is more than can be said for Epic Movie, Smokin’ Aces and Blood and Chocolate, all of which are also skulking into cineplexes this week, along with Steven Soderbergh’s The Good German, which almost certainly deserved better.)



Flannel Pajamas

You probably don’t know the name of Jeff Lipsky, but you owe him an enormous debt of gratitude. Over the last 30 years, as a distribution executive for various companies, he has been responsible for acquiring and marketing many of the arthouse films of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. It’s not much of a stretch to say that he invented the model of modern American independent cinema, shepherding films like A Woman Under the Influence, Stranger Than Paradise, Life Is Sweet, My Life as a Dog and many many more. So should you go see his own film, Flannel Pajamas, merely on that basis? Of course not. But you will want to keep in mind that this is a film made by someone who cut his teeth in the business with John Cassavetes and matured with Mike Leigh (whose producer Simon Channing-Williams is this film’s executive producer). In other words, while you may well dislike this film (many viewers have, as you can read on the Internet), that doesn’t make it a failure at what it set out to do. Flannel Pajamas charts the history of a romantic relationship between two thirtysomething New Yorkers, from meeting at a blind date through marriage and on to…well, not to give away too much. When I saw Lipsky’s first film, Childhood’s End (1997), I was repelled by the characters but had to recognize the rigor with which he presented them. The couple under dissection here is easier to take, but certainly far from the bipedal puppy dogs who populate most movies about love. The actors are Justin Kirk, who plays Andy on the Showtime series Weeds and was in the HBO production of Angels in America, and Julianne Nicholson, who will be familiar to television viewers for recurring roles on Law and Order: Criminal Intent and Ally McBeal. Both make the most of a demanding script. That may or may not be something you want to see on screen; you also may not be interested in hearing a lot of articulate dialogue that doesn’t always find its target. (If you’re able to make yourself clearly understood every time you speak to your partner, you need to run seminars explaining to the rest of us how to do it.)



Fired!

“Getting fired is god’s way of saying you should be doing something else,” says one of the more optimistic interviewees in this documentary about that event that ranks between death and taxes on the list of life experiences we all least look forward to. In the case of comedienne Annabelle Gurwitch, it apparently meant that god wanted her to write a newspaper column, develop a Broadway production, write a book and now put together a movie, all flowing from the same humiliating moment when Woody Allen decided he’d rather not have her appear in his new play after all. (In a recreation of the moment, the adjective “retarded” is used to assess her audition.) It didn’t take long for Gurwitch to realize that being fired in such a way gave her a great cocktail party story—and that an awful lot of people have equally entertaining stories to tell about losing various jobs. (As Judy Gold puts it, “Pain plus time equals comedy.”) Much of Fired! plays like outtakes from The Aristocrats, or maybe an unsold VH1 series called I Love the Unemployment Line, with an endless parade of Comedy Central-familiar faces telling their favorite severance stories. The strength and weakness of the film comes from Gurwitch’s casting her net wide to deal with the enormity of the topic. Some of the comic ideas are either overextended (a very funny story by actor Tate Donovan unnecessarily enacted by sock puppets) or merely stillborn (a skit with Andy Dick involving…well, Andy Dick.) But when the movie gently edges into seriousness with a Michael Moore-ish look at General Motors squeezing concessions out of its union employees and then firing them anyway, it’s surprisingly effective. The biggest surprise comes from an unexpectedly emotional outburst by former Nixon speechwriter Ben Stein: Presumably brought on board to offer an alternative point of view to Clinton labor secretary and NPR commentator Robert Reich, he instead demonstrates the difference between a conservative and the neocons who are hard at work destroying the American way of life. Clocking in at under 72 minutes, Fired! is too slight and erratic to be really worth the price of admission if you’re collecting unemployment yourself, though it’s worth a look to those who don’t have to worry about the cost of a ticket.





Back to issue index