Working nights, I usually come home, fire up some type of microwavable dish and hit the couch in search of something to watch on the late night offerings of digital cable. Usually I’m stuck on ESPN and whatever late-night NBA game they show, but every so often I perform the masochistic duty of flipping on Showtime. What is the best Showtime can offer?
Adrift in Manhattan: As if Showtime’s homemade offerings aren’t pretentious enough, we poor subscribers get a lot of fare like Adrift in Manhattan. Starring Heather Graham, who I have yet to see do a movie without playing 1.) a complete slut or 2.) getting naked. It’s become her calling card and she’s good at it, and directors have been paying her to do it for 10 years.
Graham and estranged husband William Baldwin are at odds over the death of their two-year-old, who took a Clapton-esque leap from a New York apartment window. The tragedy split them up, despite efforts by Baldwin’s character to reconcile.
Being the movie is based in New York, Baldwin gets the time-honored duty of playing the pretentious English/Poetry teacher – beard and all. You can’t have a pretentious New York movie without a pretentious teacher wearing a pretentious beard. That’s what New York liberal intellectuals do I guess.
The movie’s low point comes when Baldwin, who is living with another women, bemoans the loss of his son. When she states she has had two miscarriages of her own, Baldwin becomes enraged at the thought of her comparing her own personal tragedy to his own.
“Those were just fetuses!”
The movie’s other subplot involves a shy, young aloof photographer who stalks Graham and works at a local camera store. Instead of calling the police, Graham what Graham usually does, brings him home and gets naked. Photographer boy, despite having a naked Heather Graham in his midst, is more interested in the scarf she’s wearing. Go figure.
Your Friends and Neighbors: Basically the same thing as Adrift in Manhattan. This time Ben Stiller wears a beard and teachers an acting class. Relationship study begins and Amy Brenneman from Judging Amy is the one who gets naked. The movie also stars Aaron Eckhart, Jason Patric and Nastassja Kinski.
The movie never tops the opening of the credits which includes a small band of strings playing “Enter Sandman.”
Dead Weekend: Total cable C-grade late-night fixture, Dead Weekend stars Stephen Baldwin before he became a conservative christian and before he did The Usual Suspects or Celebrity Mole. Baldwin and buddy David Rasche are members of a fascist military police group in search of a female chameleon alien who is running amock in L.A. What’s she here to do? Have sex, of course.
Clerks had a bigger budget than this movie. But that won’t keep Baldwin and Rasche from actually trying to act, which they do well. Baldwin manages to keep a straight face every time his alien love-interest “changes” into another comely female. After watching, I have more respect for Baldwin now than before he turned conservative.
Add post-apocolyptic D.J. spinning tunes and mocking the man, add punks taking on the military and cheapo low-budget action fare. Escape from New York it ain’t, but hey, we’re talking Showtime here.
“Your Friends and Neighbors” is where I finally parted permanent company with Roger Ebert. Sure he had steered me wrong many times before, but I decided to give him one, final chance. The script was so ridiculous, the characters so 2 dimensional, the plot so immature… I would not be surprised to learn Neil Labutte wrote the film as a sort of creative writing exercise; write a screenplay that puts 6 of the least interesting, most self-centered men and women together. The characters’ behavior made no sense. They existed solely to be scum. Fine. I like a movie with some scummy characters, but their scummyness needs to make some sense. There was no valid explanation for why any of these people hung out together. Painfully immature and two-dimensional. Make that one-dimensional. I walked out of there wondering how a seasoned pro like Ebert could possibly give it a great review. Even a no-nothing like me could see it was underdeveloped, poorly written garbage. Oh, wait, it made professional people and marrieds look like wanton imbeciles. It’s then I finally noticed the pattern; well written, good movie showing good people living decent lives = bad Ebert review. Poorly written, bad movie showing bad people living bad lives = good Ebert review. Roger Ebert hates me. Might as well return the favor.