I rented three movies this weekend. There’s no real link between them, save being movies I haven’t seen before, but wanted to. Rather than three longer entries, here’s three shorter reviews:
State and Main – 2000 (Dir. David Mamet)
I’ve been somewhat familiar with David Mamet for around the last decade or so, but I know more about him by way of reputation than his actual work (although my first serious acting lessons culminated in a scene from his play American Buffalo). He’s known for his dialogue, and his directorial obsession with dialogue (down to having actors rehearse their lines to a metronome). State and Main is his most recent comic directorial effort, starring an ensemble cast of fairly well-known names. It’s about the lead-up to a movie crew filming in small-town Vermont. While it’s billed as an ensemble piece (and due to the number of characters present, it technically is), it’s a bit less easily defined than that. If anything, it’s a William H. Macy-lead (never a bad thing) comedy with a standout performance by a younger Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the film-within-the-film’s rookie screenwriter. While Alec Baldwin and Sarah-Jessica Parker have small roles as the impossibly selfish lead actors (to match Macy’s impossibly selfish Director), the bulk of the scenes are not a biting satire of Hollywood amorality (which is present, but subdued if anything), but a love story between Hoffman and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet’s wife and frequent star). It’s simple, sweet, and/but impossibly perfect.
But this is a Mamet flick, so dialogue is the intended star. And it generally is. It’s fast-paced, witty, and very clever. Too clever in some cases. While Hoffman gives a great performance (understated to be sure, but it fits the character), and Pidgeon matches him with every epigram, it felt like Sarah-Jessica Parker and Alec Baldwin were underused. Baldwin’s scenes with Julia Stiles (playing an underaged fan of Baldwin’s) are just too short to really justify the sort of chaos they later cause. I suppose an argument could be made that the movie is meant to be shown through the eyes of William H. Macy and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who are by and large oblivious to his indiscretions, but it’s not made clear enough that this is the case. I guess the whole just isn’t the sum of it’s parts in this case. The level of talent is present, and there’s some great scenes to be found, but it doesn’t add up to the satire of/small town take on Hollywood decadence that it was trying to be. It’s closer to the latter than the former, but it’s still just close. B-
Smart People – 2008 (Dir. Noam Murro)
Smart People flew fairly under-the-radar following it’s release earlier this year, despite it being the first release of note starring Ellen Page since her Oscar nomination for Juno. It’s kind of a shame that it didn’t get much notice, because it’s a very well done, low key dramedy (I assume that’s the correct spelling). It skews more towards drama than the DVD art suggests, but it’s not without laughs. Dennis Quaid plays an aloof english professor, who’s also a single dad looking to move his career and his personal life forward. After an embarrassing injury at an impound lot, Quaid loses his ability to drive (legally, anyway) and a large chunk of his self-reliance. Enter Thomas Hayden-Church as his luckless adopted brother Chuck, who is effectively hired as his personal driver. Of course, he also winds up being something of a catalyst for the change the family needs. Otherwise it’d be a boring movie about people impossible to relate to.
It’s similar to In Good Company, another similarly low-key movie starring Dennis Quaid. But the difference here is that it’s more of an ensemble piece. In Good Company was more or less a compare/contrast of one man leaving the prime of his career and another entering it. Smart People explores not just Quaid and Hayden-Church’s different paths, but Ellen Page and Ashton Holmes’ as Quaid’s children. Throw in love interest Sarah Jessica Parker, and you get a fairly broad study of a family in need of a wake-up call more than a middle-aged career man coming to terms with turning fifty.
It comes close to getting cheesy in the last act, but what keeps things interesting is how it presents a reality that not everybody is willing (or able) to change who they are. Dennis Quaid is still arguably the same arrogant academic that he was at the beginning, but he’s at least aware of it and working on it. Ellen Page remains relatively unchanged as well, but more aware that things are in flux. It takes Uncle Chuck to get them all on the path to self-improvement, but the movie doesn’t cop out by showing us a happy ending where everyone ceases to be selfish, but an ending where nobody’s content to remain oblivious to it anymore. Which could be frustrating or refreshing, depending on your perspective. It’s not a unique look into the situation, but it’s a well-done character-driven story, and I’m always a fan of that, no matter how low-key. B
I also rented Michael Clayton, but due to a DVD malfunction, that review remains pending.