Zooey

This movie is gut wrenchingly sad, but it is entertaining as hell. I thought it would be a lame movie because I have never heard of it, but DAMN... It has street griminess, drugs, hookers... all the elements to make an entertaining night (at the movies, that is). It is a little predictable at times, but it also kept me guessing. The story is a tale of a New York hooker and her drug dealer boyfriend as they try to make it off the streets and go legit. It seems like they are trapped, but they hit bottom and try to turn their lives around. The ending will flip you out if you are anything like me. I was practically in tears toward the end, but you can decide for yourself. Just watch the movie, it's better than most crap out there, and better than those HBO hooker specials (except for the Atlantic City one maybe).

This movie is entertaining as long as you are wasting time.

The acting is mediocre at best. I hoped that the fact that neither of the lead actors had done any movie work before would mean they were raw and untapped talent. What it meant was that everyone else that passed on them was wise.

The story/writing is unoriginal. Hooker wants to quit her job. The man that loves her is conflicted between supporting her and pressuring her to stop being a whore.

The guy that plays the "pimp" is so bad that it's funny. I actually laughed out loud during the scene where he tries to get rough with one of his whores.

If you have nothing else to do, this isn't a bad movie.

The best part of the movie is the reference to John Kennedy Toole's only novel. Aside from that, it's all unimpressive. Well, I guess it is impressive that it got made at all. That part is rather remarkable.

Written, directed and edited by Sherman Lau, "Zooey" is a brilliantly shot and insightfully acted love story of the too-beautiful-for-this-world variety. The world in this case is New York in general, Brooklyn in particular. The lovers are Zooey and her new husband Angel. Zooey and Angel are the sort of young people we all drive past in our cars on out way anywhere, and often think of as common street trash: bluntly put, Zooey is a junkie whore and Angel is a drug dealer, or at least a runner for a dealer.

Lau, a longtime producer-editor for VH1 (and a veteran of the sorely lamented "Behind the Music"), based Angel and Zooey on a real-life couple he knew; their sad humanity, and Lau's sympathy for their plight, sears through every frame of the film. In the title role, Sarah Louise Lilley is a truly special find, beautiful, soulful, angry and funny, looking not a day over 25 but at the same time incredibly tired and worn-out by The Life. Lau interweaves convincingly played, clinically shot "interview" segments throughout, in which Zooey lays out her dreams for the future: moving to a place called Churchill, Manitoba, with Angel. She loves to read about the place, knows everything there is to know about it, and also fills in her own visions of a cute little cottage, white picket fence, kids, dog etc.

Angel shares her dream, works hard to try and help it come true, but at first he comes off as a bit of drip, entirely too accepting of Zooey's career choice (though his gig isn't one to write home about either). But his patience slowly reveals itself not just as love but as faith, a deep-seated belief he has in Zooey that she doesn't really have in herself. But when Zooey's best friend Cheryl (Rachael Roberts) ends up on the wrong side of pimp daddy Louie (Larry James), matters get complicated. The couple takes in Cheryl's wrestling-crazed kid Jake (sweetly played by Jordan Burt, who has gone on to star in M. Night Shyamalan's "The Village"), but they are hardly equipped to deal with the chilly intricacies of New York's social services bureaucracy.

Then Angel decides to avenge Cheryl, though an avenging angel is hardly what he's cracked up to be…and the road to some kind of hell looms. A lovely shot of the Empire State Building framed by the Brooklyn Bridge says everything about where Zooey and Angel find themselves versus where they'd like to be - short of actually making it up to Canada.

"Zooey" is a grim and gritty urban tale that somehow manages to radiate a touching hope in humanity even under the most dire, even tragic circumstances. Unlike the beautiful lost souls of the film, director Lau and star Lilley look to have especially bright futures.