Mr. Jealousy

A film about relations; you may think: Oh no not an another one, not a Woody Allen remake. Wrong, this is a screwball comedy like the films with Cary Grant en Katherine Hepburn. Makes group therapy slightly ridiculous. Stoltz is great as the jealous lover, obsessed with the past of his present girlfriend.

Maybe it was just my mood, but this struck me as that very rare thing, a successful, intelligent romantic comedy.

Granted there are a few moments when there is a little too much Woody Allen influence, but then, Woody has certainly borrowed from others as well.

The acting is subtle, the writing witty, and some of the jokes are really funny.

Not every moment works, but most do, and there is a lot of thoughtfulness among the laughs as Eric Stoltz works to overcome his crippling jealousy.

For all of you Whit Stillman fans (Metropolitan, Barcelona, and Last Days of Disco) check out this movie as well as Noah's earlier film Kicking and Screaming. The premise of the movie is very good and it lives up to its title. If you hate the kind of movie where everyone spends the whole movie talking to one another then skip this one because there are not any jokes involving people being kicked in their midsection or everyone's favorite bathroom humor. Instead you have an intelligent comedy that will add nothing of value to your life but will hopefully make you laugh as you examine other peoples neurosis. I think that there is chemistry between Stoltz and Sciorra despite what a previous reviewer said. I also think this film is better than Kicking and Screaming.

Lester (Eric Stolz) has a new girlfriend in Ramona (Annabella Sciorra). She is a beautiful lady, with a swell job in a Brooklyn museum, and she is continuing work on a graduate degree at Columbia. Substitute teacher Lester, however, is obsessed with Ramona's past relationships. He was burned by a couple of former girlfriends and fidelity is paramount to him. When Ramona actually gives Lester a book to read, written by a former boyfriend, Lester is stunned. Not long after this, Lester stumbles upon the nouveau-celebrity author at a therapy group. Ah ha! If Lester assumes an alias and becomes part of the group, he has a chance to find out more about Ramona's past and her predilections for loyalty. Yet, even as Lester discovers revelations about his new girlfriend, he may be endangering his own chance of survival with Ramona, by not living in the present alone. Should he continue? This film has an offbeat charm that makes it attractive. The script is thoughtful, clever, and original, daring the viewer to listen closely to every word and idea presented. The actors, in addition to the two stars, are very fine, with Chris Eigeman giving a nice turn as the newly famous author, and Bridget Fonda, Peter Bogdanovich, and others on hand to help out in a big way. The costumes are attractive and the NYC setting always a winner. However, this is not the typical romcom by any means. It has a slower pace and its commitment to dialogue over action makes it a hard sell for the ADD crowd. This said, do catch Mr. Jealousy at your earliest opportunity, if you like to vary your viewing habits. Here is one movie that offers charm and intelligence without losing its own unique identity.

The downfall of nearly all comedies is that Silliness is so often used as a substitute for humor. In this film, I never felt embarrassed for any of the characters, who were allowed to seem like genuinely real people in the context of a genuinely humorous development. It was also literate, which was nice given the thread of narrative running through the thing. I felt that simply reading the script would have been a nice rainy-day read, but at the same time, the lines were not literarily pompous or turgid.

Altogether, this was not a great film---but nicely, nothing happened in it to make it a bad one, either. If you're fed up with variations on same-old-same-old, sit back and just let this film flow over you.