Get Well Soon

I had not seen any trailers or heard any reviews about this film. I rented it for the sole purpose of seeing one of my favorites, Courteney Cox. The scenes with Cox and her brother & mother are supreme, and she steals the scene when on-screen with Gallo. Good fun, even if just for the guilty joy of watching my favorite "friend" get angry and curse. Well cast and well acted. B+

I'm a Vincent Gallo nut. I love the guy and would even watch a movie of him reciting the phone book. That would probably be more entertaining than sitting through 'Get Well Soon'. Apparently this is a comedy. Coulda fooled me. The only laugh I got out of it was the sheer audacity of the video cover blurb which said it was "in the tradition of 'There's Something About Mary'. Say what?! '..Mary' was actually funny, 'Get Well Soon' isn't. And apart from that the similarity is? You tell me!

Vincent Gallo ('Buffalo 66', 'Palookaville') plays Bobby Bishop, a hip talk show host. He appears to be cracking up. He leaves his show in disgrace to return to New York and look up his old girlfriend (Courtney Cox) and attempts to woo her back. Mixed up with this are various, I hesitate to even call them sub-plots, involving mental patients and Matthew Broderick's dog. It's too stupid and pointless to even bother elaborating. Gallo radiates charisma, and is always watchable, even when the material is as poor and as dull as this. And boy! is it poor and dull.

The supporting cast includes Jeffrey Tambor (best known for 'The Larry Sanders Show', and who, funnily enough, was actually in 'There's Something About Mary'), Anne Meara (veteran character actor/comedienne, and mother to Ben Stiller), and Elina Lowensohn ('Schindler's List' and various Hal Hartley movies).

This is easily the worst movie Vincent Gallo has been involved with. It's even worse than 'Arizona Dream' which at least had a handful of outstanding scenes involving Gallo to redeem it. 'Get Well Soon' is a tedious bore from start to finish. I honestly can't think of one good thing about it. The fact is it's an awful movie that will please nobody. Let's just pretend it never happened...

Bobby (Vincent Gallo), a very successful national television talk show host, stationed in Los Angeles, is having a near-breakdown. He begins asking very inappropriate questions to a beautiful female guest and, shortly after, takes a leave of absence. What is really bothering Bobby is that, long ago and far away, his name was Kevin and he gave up a nice relationship with Lily (Courteney Cox) to pursue his professional ambitions. Lily, who lives in New York City, is living with a jerk (Tate Donovan) and is still seething from Bobby's rejection, even though she watches Bobby's show consistently. But, she also has other problems to deal with, including a mentally ill brother and an eccentric mother (Anne Meara). When Bobby/Kevin comes home to the Big Apple and tries to contact her, will she answer his calls? This film has some very good messages about life and a fine cast. Gallo and Cox are attractive folks who command attention from the viewer, with Meara doing a nice job, too. Add on some good-looking costumes, sets, and production values and you have an eye-catching film. However, even though the script has its heart in the right place, that is, one should never choose success over personal happiness, it employs way too much bad language for comfort, in my opinion. Too bad one can not choose the "clean version" of a film, as one can do when buying a music CD. In any case, if you love romance and/or lesser-known films of quality, this is a good choice. But, if bad language offends you, you should go with something else, such as Return to Me.

I must admit that I was captivated by Vincent Gallo's performance in "Buffalo '66" and that is the only reason that I was drawn to "Get Well Soon" when I saw it on the video rental shelf. So maybe I wanted to like this film more that others.

Regardless, I feel that "Get Well Soon" succeeded in many areas. The plot was a blend of dark comedy and soul-searching, much like "Buffalo '66" and Gallo gave almost as good a performance as the desperate, haunted protagonist. Courtney Cox delivers a solid performance as his old flame whom he's seeking to reunite with in hopes of getting a hold on his life again. Thrown into the mix are the mental illness of her mother and brother and latent homosexuality of her live-in boyfriend. Always troubled by the constant exposure to Gallo's "Bobby Bishop" character who's now a late night talk show host, Cox's character "Lily" cannot find solace in a world of overwhelming emotions.

This film is a success, despite the fact that it's not entirely original. However, the plot lines are intriguing and the characters are just short of mesmerizing. The story is told in a reverse pyramid fashion where the viewer has to deduce exactly what the relationship between the characters are.

This is by no means an outstanding film... but as far as Vincent Gallo movies go... I don't feel at all disappointed.

Rating: 7/10

Love Gallo, that's gotta be stated up front, that's why I wanted to see this film in the first place. He's great in it, of course, as 'empty' talk show host Bobby Bishop, searching the streets of New York City for his lost true love, Lily (Courtney Cox). There's a lot of other stuff going on as well (a LOT of stuff) - crazy people trying to steal Matthew Broderick's dog (to get closer to Sarah Jessica Parker), Lily's mother (the great Anne Meara), who is - get this - practicing to be a homeless person (just in case), gay boyfriends, insane friends, lying hookers, Bobby's beyond-brown-nosing manager (the fabulous Jeffrey Tambor, who played basically the same role on Gary Shandling's show). I think this is the main reason the movie is just not very satisfying -- there's simply too #$@kin' much going on, for $@#(*&ts sake.

If some of these characters had been left out (like most of them), and we had gotten to focus more on Bobby and his self-destructive-but-trying-oh-so-hard-to-make-it-work character, Get Well Soon would have been a far better movie. Gallo, with all his good/bad-and-everything-inbetween contradictions gloriously blazing in full form, could have easily carried the day.