Dummy

Steven (Adrien Brody), nearly 30 and living with his parents, sees an old Edgar Bergen movie on TV and decides to fulfill his longtime dream of becoming a ventriloquist. His beautiful unemployment counselor Lorena (Vera Farmiga) finds him work, but puts out a restraining order on him when he paints a thank-you note on her door. Later, this young mother agrees to date him anyway, but finds his bickering family, and his inexperience with women, daunting to a relationship. Steven's sister Heidi (Illeana Douglas) is a wedding planner with a drunken ex-fiancé who keeps showing up at the door. His friend Fangora (Milla Jovavich) is a pseudo-punk rocker whose sex does not prevent her from giving him terrible advice about women. The wedding of a Jewish girl, who wants Klezmer music and gets something unexpected, will become a turning point in everyone's lives.

Whoa, this is bad. Greg Pritikin directs his own script, about a tenth of which is funny. The rest strains hard to give us quirky characters, wacky situations and unexpected plot twists; but we can't buy any of it. The movie becomes unrecoverable when Lorena changes her mind about the restraining order and agrees to date Steven—after he mails her a videotaped apology featuring himself and his dummy. The message on her door disturbed her, but the tape charmed her? I could almost hear Vera Farmiga's brain going "ZZZZZT!" as she tried to play this character. Their relationship grows into the least believable nerd-with-beautiful-girl scenario I've ever seen.

The performances are varied. Adrien Brody recovers fairly well from playing such a pointless character. Farmiga is charming, especially considering the impossibility of her job. Jovavich, with her affected Jersey accent, never quite seems to inhabit her character. Illeana Douglas, a good actress, does a lousy job here. She doesn't seem to get what she's doing, and we can hardly blame her.

This is part of a sub-genre in comedy that I dislike: one that blurs the distinction between celebrating and belittling the losers it depicts. "Napoleon Dynamite," "Waiting for Guffman" and documentaries like "American Movie" and "Gates of Heaven" all belong in this dubious category. But "Dummy" is much worse. It's as phony as it is condescending.

Adrien Brody , Milla Jovovich, and Illeana Douglas are all hilarious in this great little comedy... Beautiful Milla shows her unique talent for being simultaneously really sexy and really funny, as she did 5 yrs earlier, in "The Fifth Element"... What I like most is that the humour is mainly subtle. The funniest bits are more understated than they are in the bigger-budget comedies with the in-your-face – appeal to the broadest possible audience stuff... "Dummy" is a fine example of not compromising, in order to harvest the biggest-possible box-office receipts. I give this side-splitting indie 8 big-ones and whole-heartedly recommend it.

I had a premonition I was about to see a comedy with a lot of heart even before the main titles played out at a screening of "Dummy" at the American Film Market 2000 recently.

In the opening scene, Steven, who lives with his eccentric parents and sister, sits enthralled watching the flickering tv image of ventriloquist Edgar Bergan and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy. As the camera moves in on the young man, we see in his eyes the depth of his dreams and aspirations to at last make something of his humdrum life. The next day, he gives up his 9-to-5 job and announces to his dysfunctional family that he wants to be a ventriloquist. His ever-busy mother(Jessica Walter), making yet another tuna sandwich, remarks that his career choice is" nice but not very realistic" while his sister observes that with the dummy on his lap, Steven looks like a child molester.

Casting is right on the mark. Adrien Brody brings a sympathetic and likable quality to the role of Steven as he manipulates his dummy to express his own private fears and feelings to the people around him. Vera Farmiga, the love interest, is extremely engaging as his employment counselor and Illeana Douglas, the very unmarried sister, is constantly funny. Outstanding too is Milla Javovich as Steven's best friend, a punk rocker with layers of attitude. Writer and director Greg Pritikin skillfully holds down the pathos and gives his film just the right touch of humor. An entertaining movie that is worth a look.

I really liked the quirky humour and though Adrien Brody's acting was astonishing, the ensemble playing and the interplay of dummy and people was what made the film work for me. I am an ignorant English Quaker and I had a simple question for the director or Adrien or any other American viewers. Is Adrien's character meant to represent a specifically Jewish character, or is the film, as I suspect, more universal in its design?

I teach 11-16 year olds and have written books on mainstreaming children with special needs. I may have read the movie all wrong, but to me the humour brought alive all the hassle that children with Asperger's Syndrome have, trying to communicate their ideas and feelings to an uncomprehending world. My old school has one of the best records in UK for bringing children on the autistic spectrum out of special schools into ordinary classrooms and get great results for them. It takes real love for the staff to help the other children treat them with the kind of respect they need to show their proper talents. The anguish in Adrien's eyes was met with perfect friendship and love in his sister and girl friends and I thought that it was this that helped him reveal his true talents.

I have never filled in a comments box like this before and I only do so because Dummy is one of my all time favourite movies

Respect

This movie is terrific. It's very funny and very powerful. Everything that happens is a necessary plot point to tell the story. Nothing is extraneous. Each character is uniquely entertaining and real, they each remind us of someone we know. We root for Stephen, we dislike Heidi, and we can't help but love Fanny. The characters are developed wonderfully. The performances are all terrific. I've never seen any of Adrien Brody's work before, but if it's all as great as this then he's destined for super stardom. Illeana Douglas is hilarious and perfect as usual. I was most blown away by Milla Jovovich. She's amazingly fun to watch on screen and her New Jersey accent is dead-on. Great dialog and flawless directing. Simply put it's a wonderful film with a unique theme, which is unique in itself.