Echo Park

Excellent film, great cast and didn't anyone notice the pictures that were put in there on purpose (yet done in a subtle way) Like the photos of "Elvira" on the wall in the apartment (when the actress who played Elvira was also in the film sans the black wig.... Or when Tom Hulce and the boy went to deliver the pizza and Hulce stopped briefly to pause to look at the photo of Wolfgang Amadeus on the wall of the house? (Hulce was nominated for an academy award for his depiction of Amadeus two years earlier before this film)

I really thought the writing was superb too and ...God it even made me miss Los Angeles!

I give this film a 9 out of 10. I hadn't seen it since my teens when it came out and was so glad to get to see it again on cable.

I highly recommend it...an intelligent well directed pic for all.

The title takes its name from that run-down, Bohemian quarter of Los Angeles, where (among other inhabitants) a pizza delivery boy dreams of publishing poetry, a single mother works nightly as a strip-o-gram dancer while awaiting her big career break as an actress, and a naive bodybuilder lands a role in a cheap deodorant commercial, setting his alarm for 3:00 a.m. to see his (small) screen debut. It's a neighborhood of considerable charm and eccentricity, but too bad the same can't always be said of the film, which has its moments but (in retrospect) all too often resembles an offbeat, low-rent plagiarism of Neil Simon. Michael Ventura's script is curiously transparent from a writer (in the LA Weekly, at the time) of opaque film criticism; the only way his scenario could be more obvious would have been to make the Tom Hulce character an aspiring screenwriter instead of just a closet poet.

This movie was recommended to me by a person who I believe has great taste in movies. But I have to admit that I totally missed the mark on this one. I lived in LA for 12 years and I enjoyed seeing some of it again, but that is about the only redeeming value I got out of the movie. The opening and closing sequences seemed totally bizarre and out of place. I thought the acting was sub par and where the story was going was totally predictable until the jump cut to the scene at the end where everyone was suddenly running through the Alps like the opening sequence to the Sound of Music. This was billed as a comedy. I don't think I laughed out loud once though it had some mildly humorous moments. I could have skipped this one easily.

Low-budget item about three would-be stars living together in a section of Los Angeles: Susan Dey is the single mother and acting-hopeful who ends up delivering Strip-o-Grams, Thomas Hulce writes songs and delivers pizzas and Michael Bowman hopes to be a celebrity bodybuilder. The set-up sounds overly precious--though it certainly doesn't play that way, thanks to sharp, acute writing and savvy directing. Of the ensemble, it's Susan Dey who surprises with a fully-dimensional performance; cynical, wise, exhausted, and yet still clinging to hope, Dey's first assignment (stripping at a small party) is excruciating to watch (for all the right reasons), making her eventual accomplishment at this profession almost joyous to behold. This is one of the few films I've ever seen to visually equate self-confidence with success, and the tangled relationships between the roommates is well-realized, wistful, funny and touching. *** from ****

"We're all just delivering pizza ... " [Jonathan]*

Everyone has dreams ... but reality makes us have to live the 'normal life' while waiting for our dreams to come true. That's the way it is in Echo Park, California for three mismatched people that come together and form a bond of friendship that none of them ever expected!

A Pizza Man who's really a song writer. A Waitress that's really an actress. A Body Builder that's really the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In Echo Park ... dreams can come true!

===========> *TOM HULCE as Jonathan ... shows the tenderness of this endearing character. And we also get to hear some of his beautiful voice as he sings, pieces, of the song he's working on! (A definite added bonus.)