IMAGINE ME AND YOU / Ol Parker (2005)
January 26th, 2006 by Scott Marks
Imagine Me & You (2005)
Written & Directed by: Ol Parker
Genres: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Gay
Cast: Piper Perabo, Lena Headey, Matthew Goode, Celia Imrie, Anthony Head, Darren Boyd, Sue Johnston, Boo Jackson, Sharon Horgan, Eva Birthistle, Vinette Robinson, Ben Miles, John Thompson, Mona Hammond, Ruth Sheen
Aspect Ratio: 2.35 : 1
Running Time: 94 min.
After decades of movies stereotyping homosexual men as poodle-carrying interior decorators and lesbians as diesel dykes vocally channeling Herman Munster, we all hankered for a time when cinegays could be depicted as nothing more than three-dimensional characters in a well-told story. Imagine Me and You liberally demonstrates that all sexual orientations are entitled to sappy romantic comedies
If there is a niche for Piper Perabo to fill, she’s yet to find it. The actress has taken the Indie route (Whiteboyz, Slap Her…She’s French) and been afforded the full-blown Hollywood treatment. In case the multiplex screen-wraps Coyote Ugly, Rocky & Bullwinkle or Cheaper by the Dozen(s) escaped your gaze, suffice it to say that she displays a tremendous degree of on-screen talent and appeal in all three. Eventually taste must enter into it, and her choice of projects could eventually land her a one-way ticket to Parker Posey-land.
Ms. Perabo is no stranger to Sapphic cinema. Check out her strong work, and steamy boarding school love scenes with Jessica Pare (while roommate Mischa Barton looks on), in Lost and Delirious. This time around she affects a convincing British accent as Rachel, a woman the press notes describe as “a sort of anti-Bridget Jones.” After five years of togetherness, Rachel and her best friend Heck (Matthew Goode) decide to go normal and get married. Rachel is in her late twenties, devoted to her groom-to-be, and we are led to believe that she never so much as thought about another woman until meeting Luce (Lena Headey), the floral arranger at her wedding. As for Mr. Goode, this is the second time in almost as many weeks the poor bloke drew the Ralph Bellamy card. (Scarlett Johansson leapfrogs over him to get to Jonathan Rhys-Meyer in Match Point.)
At the ceremony, florist Luce is given the red-carpet treatment. Since when do the hired help at a ritzy shindig drink and mingle, let alone dance, with invitees? In an even more flagrant display of bad taste, Luce and Rachel are assigned a sickly sweet meet-cute. While grabbing for the ladle, Rachel’s unaccustomed wedding ring falls in the punchbowl and SuperWoman Luce saves the day by fishing it out. A further attempt to transform Luce into a dark, mysterious heroine (she walks away from the ceremony artfully framed in distant silhouette) adds nothing more than a pretty transition scene.
Most of the film’s secondary male characters are overdrawn, sex-crazed jerks. As Heck’s boss Gordon, Rick Warden’s lascivious post-nuptials advances on Luce would rankle Abel Ferrara, and I’m not talking strictly about their visual presentation. His slave-to-his-dick best friend Coop (Darren Boyd) boasts, “They teach the birds and bees about me.” The cocksman later avenges his chum’s betrayal by calling Luce a “dumb slut” to her face. Even a customer at Luce’s shop, in search of the perfect romantic bouquet, leaves happily clutching a phallic cactus.
The script does achieve an occasional degree of verbal wit that makes the rest of it look even more tired by comparison. There’s the delightfully annoying little sister played by Class Valedictorian for the Virginia Weidler Academy for Smart Ass Child Actors, Boo Jackson. Her unstoppable mission to resolve such unanswerable questions as “Why is the alphabet in that order?” and “Do penguins have knees?” makes for an amusing running gag. And not since Spencer Tracy has an actor brought such anticipatory emptiness to that hoary staple of wedding comedies, the father of the bride. Darren Boyd’s hilariously underplayed asides are the only reason to see this film.
Openly straight filmmaker Ol Parker (the press notes immediately leak that he, “fell in love with [his] wife at first sight”) wants desperately to fashion a “bells, whistles and fireworks” kind of romance. While the script does provide more than a few bright exchanges, Parker seems to have watched (and not seen through) too many ol’ movies. In time the greenhorn writer/director makes obvious his inability to steer clear of formulaic reefs.
It is a long hour-and-a-half before the inevitable unveiling of The Turtles Happy Together. Whatever feelings stir inside the viewer at the conclusion derive from faded memories suddenly restored by the golden oldie. It certainly wasn’t the film’s routine race-to-the-airport-in-order-to-prevent-my-lover’s-departure resolution. Imagine seeing Imagine Me and You and leave it at that.
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Filed Under Reviews, Theatrical
AN EASTERN WESTERNER / Hal Roach (1920)
January 7th, 2006 by Scott Marks
An Eastern Westerner (1920)
Directed by: Hal Roach
Written by: Frank Terry, H.M. Walker
Genres: Comedy, Short, Family, Western
Cast: Harold Lloyd, Mildred Davis, Noah Young
Aspect Ratio: 1.33 : 1
Running Time: 24 min.
At some point in every comedian’s history they’re forced to don chaps, a ten-gallon Stetson and mount their acts on the range. Jewish comedians in particular never seemed to make the leap needed to suspend disbelief. Name them: The Marx Bros. (Go West), Jerry Lewis (with Dean in Pardners), and The 3 Stooges (Punchy Cowpunchers) all did their worst work in the western genre. Gentiles fared only slightly better (Laurel and Hardy in Way out West and Buster Keaton’s Out West), but with the rare exception of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles (is this really a western?) it seems that horseback and horseradish don’t mix. Harold Lloyd is about as Jewish as QVC, but the “glasses” character (particularly in his Jazz Age Playboy mode) on horseback earns him an honorary set of pais.
“The Time – Several thousand cocktails before the prohibition hour.”
With this introductory title card it should come as no surprise that we open on a densely packed frame loaded with drunken revelers, dancing girls and cascades of streamers. While Harold’s parents stay up all hours waiting for him to come home, our hero is shimmying up a storm on the dance floor, especially when a frozen daiquiri (accidentally dropped by brother Gaylord) lands down his neck. The opening passage, particularly when Harold unloads a well-placed fire hydrant on the dance floor, is a wonderful blend of slapstick and the star’s attempts to steer his vehicles in a more character-driven path. This embryonic fish-out-of-water anecdote finds party boy Harold sentenced by his father from Manhattan to hard time on his uncle’s ranch on the Piute Pass.
Kudos to the uncredited art director for their splendid period reproduction: it looks more like an Allan Dwan western than a silent comedy. The crooked town is run by unscrupulous land baron “Tiger Lip” Tompkins (Noah Young). Looking for a job to help her sick father, The Girl (Mildred Davis) finds work in Tompkins’ saloon.
The train, even more anxious to return to civilization than our lead, zips in town stopping the fast motion long enough for a Porter to hand a disembarking Harold his grip and speed off. Gone are the days when Harold displayed pushy, at times obnoxious behavior. When Mildred spots the hopelessly embarrassed dude regaining composure after a horse kick, he has nothing to do but join in her laughter.
There is plenty of slapstick to go around and the sight of Young firing a gun as though it were a bullwhip defies description (and logic). There’s plenty of shooting, crooked card games and barroom brawls, but Lloyd’s gags do little to freshen (or flesh out) the genres built-in clichés. The final business between Lloyd and Tompkins’ gang of Masked Avengers leaves room for some spectacular gags in this otherwise pleasant, if not overly ambitious, comedy.
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