hdinin

To be taken seriously only as political satire. Quite humorous and edgy, with a sharp script, but spotty continuity in the narrative. Almost more a cartoon than a good story.

None of the characters are believable, which is OK, as they seem to be distillations of types. All of the men in this film are horrible--I wouldn't want a friend or a relative among them. Women are treated as victims, more or less, what spare representation there is of women, though both Joan Allen and Anna Paquin are wonderful in these highly stylized roles.

Jeff Daniels's performance, as are those of most of the other men, are masterpieces of underacting. Gary Sinise and Giovanni Ribisi are given grand opportunities to chew up the scenery, which one may have every expectation either will do, literally, at any moment.

It seems to me this is also less about guns than it is about how guns are a horrible and all too real manifestation of those things--far more terrible and dark--that may have become by now an inalterable part of the American (that is, the U.S. American) character. Some other themes, besides casual (and not so casual) violence--twisted attitudes toward sexuality, the vagaries of the over-hot infotech culture, and our inability to perceive our own psychological deficiencies--are not well integrated.

Solondz seems tapped into what Freud called the psychopathology

of everyday life. Were more people amused by the pitiful

posturing common mores force so many of us--troubled, confused,

or frustrated as we may be--into, we would be a healthier

country.

I doubt this movie could have been made anywhere else. As much

an inquiry into the American psyche and the zeitgeist--very much

projected into our own time--as It's a Wonderful Life. Funny and

heartbreaking, perhaps shocking and uncomfortable at times, but

never discomfiting, except perhaps to the repressed and the

sanct

Seems overly self-indulgent at times, at others brilliantly

hilarious. Big Night created high expectations. One major

problem is that the plot (complicated and convoluted as any in

the zany comedies of the 30s that inspire this) takes too long

in being established and the plot complications that bear the

real fruit of humor don't occur until late in the second act, as

it were. A somewhat reserved recommendation.