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The Simian Line (2000)

There are attempts at stylizing, moments of humor, apparent insights into contemporary life in New York (and New Jersey), and a kind of cheap glamorizing of people who already very glamorous. There's a very starry cast (big names drop like snowflakes, and have has much resilience), but between a television kind of tawdry filmmaking, a stumbling overreaching plot, and just plain bad directorial decisions, it's pretty awful.

In fact, the longer you watch it, the more you wonder at how so many people could have been involved in something that went so wrong. The director Linda Yellen is known for a line of increasingly awful television movies, poorly made and either sentimental or pushy. This is not officially made for t.v. but it has the same feel, with dissolves used for convenience rather than effect, with flat or bright lighting and still cameras, with actors who are determined to act normal, and normal is pretty dull when you take it literally. Some odd additions might not help--Harry Connick Jr., who is charming as a sit-com guest doesn't hold his own, and Cindy Crawford, who of course has mostly to look pretty, making you realize this is what most actresses do, and just as well.

The music is sappy to boot. Which reminds you of all those movies who want to make you feel something by pulling all the right strings, but you end up resenting it because it's not the real deal. What's frustrating here most of all is a movie that wants to be deep, and which made such attempts to be deep, only forces you to react against it.

If you do stick it out, you'll find a growing interlayering of lives, including a couple from the past (one of them a William Hurt with a horrendous southern accent) seen only by a mystic. And by the viewer. It's just not clever or interesting enough. Yes, the guys are buff, the women are charming, and life for regular very rich people who act very badly is the raw material for this really striving but impossibly flawed movie.

Great cast, sloppy, thrown-together movie with huge plot holes and characters for whom I cared very little. Saw this "film" at a movie class - the director came after the move and told us that it was filmed in 12 days. And, boy does it show! Just a few of my beefs: (1)Two of the main characters are ghosts, but they don't really add anything to the film. I suppose that they are part of the plot, but I feel that they could have been left out entirely. Moreover, the questions that their presence brings up were very distracting: we see them drinking champagne and sleeping and flirting and touching humans which made me want to know the rules of ghosts - are they really just like us? Do they have bodily functions also? Don't you think that people would hear toilets mysteriously flushing in their house at all times? One of the ghosts was uncomfortable sleeping in a chair - are we really to believe that most people have spare beds in which their ghosts sleep?(2) A young couple rents a room from a successful, very neat and sophisticated real estate broker (Lynn Redgrave). The room we see them inhabiting has painted graffiti all over it and incredibly loud music blaring at all hours - can we as an audience really believe that their landlord would not only put up with this, but be friends with them? (3) We witness fights between couples where very serious issues are brought up, but never resolved. When some of these couples make up, the issues are never brought up again, just blissfully ignored. Yikes. The entire film smacks of (very bad) "TV movie". A disaster.

This film is a credit to writer/director Linda Yellen's hard work. The story was unique and heartwarming and the performances were great! Tyne Daly's character was so great and unexpected, Redgrave was unbelievable, as always, and who knew Cindy Crawford and Harry Connick were such great actors. I would recommend this movie to anyone!

The New York papers hacked this poor film to bits this week. A friend dragged me in, and I expected it to be terrible.

Wrong! This is a beautiful, funny, romantic film. "Ghost" for grown-ups who watched the WTC towers crumble to dust.

WHO WOULD LIKE THIS: People on a date who are mature enough to like "Ghost"; adults in their 40s and up who want to see a film that's intelligent without being grim. Probably not for kids under 16 (unless they really like the Turner Movie Classics channel.) Has an R rating, but suitable for most people who aren't too sensitive, because most of the cussing takes place in one short scene. The only other R-type material is a few tasteful shots of couples in bed together.

THE FILM: The main characters are three couples, two roommates, and a fortuneteller who talks to her dead husband who live in Weehawken, New Jersey. The film follows the struggle of the couples to stay together; the roommates to avoid coming together; and the fortune-teller to hold to her belief that she can talk to her dead husband.

THE SCRIPT: The script is a little loose, but there is actually a plot, the characters all have real jobs (no professors, detectives, prostitutes or starship captains) and the dialogue is subtle. Moreover, all the main characters have excellent parts. The writers also got the Weehawken details right.

THE CAST: The cast includes William Hurt, Tyne Daly, Lynn Redgrave, Harry Connick Jr., Eric Stoltz and Cindy Crawford. Cameos? No. They all have real parts, and they all do a great job. (Yes, even Cindy Crawford. )

THE REAL HEROES:

• Patrick Seymour wrote a gentle, moving score, and he or someone else worked it into the film at the right moments without letting it overpower the other elements.

• The cinematographer, David Bridges, made the people and houses look haunting. He also made excellent use of the fact that Weehawken sits on a cliff across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Bridges took a lot of shots of the characters walking in front of the Manhattan skyline -- including eerie glimpses of the WTC towers. He also took lots of shots of the New York Waterway ferry boats -- the boats that spent Sept. 11 ferrying thousands of people to safety -- and corpses to morgues -- in places like Weehawken and Jersey City.

Of course, a lot of the people who died lived in houses just like the ones in this film.

The Simian Line is a sweet, peaceful film. But, without knowing what would happen to the WTC towers, the filmmakers made the first film released after the tragedy that cherishes the spirit of what was lost.

I saw this movie at the Hamptons International Film Festival. It was definitely my festival favorite. It was also a treat to see Harry Connick Jr., Samantha Mathis, the director, Linda Yellen, and the child star there. They gave a great interview. It was a lot of fun.

The Simian Line tells the story of three couples who get together for a Halloween party. They bring in a psychic (played by a VERY funny Tyne Daly), who finds that there are ghosts in the house (William Hurt and Samantha Mathis). Hurt plays a Southern Gentleman and Mathis a whimsical 1920's flapper. When no one belives her, Daly angrily reveals that one of the couples will be forever broken up by New Years.

From here, the audience watches the relationships mingle and shift shape while the couples try to remain together. One of the couples is Harry Connick Jr and Lynn Redgrave. They maintian a May/December romance. Redgrave plays her part with such power, I wouldn't be surprised to see an Oscar award next year. Cindy Crawford and Jamie Sheridan are another couple. Sheridan is the wall street exec. working endlessly on a merger, while Crawford is the patient wife trying to start a party planning business. Crawford is surprisingly good in this "glamour"-less role. The third couple are Monica Keena and Dylan Bruno who play two 20-somethings trying to make it as rock stars. (Keena belts out a great song entitled "Kiss My Ass.")

All in all, I really liked this movie because it had several funny moments which got me laughing out loud, as well as some deeply moving emotional scenes. I would recommend this movie to anyone, but I would say it's an especially good "date movie".