The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

This film is PURE GENIUS. It is a comedic intellectual orgasm. Do I really need to say more? No, but I will, this is a film of a one-woman show by Tomlin- In a strict film standard, it is easy to find flaws because it's a play and not a film- but I refuse to narrow it to such a confined attitude. This is not about rules of film, rules of reviewing filmed plays, this is about an experience, and as experiences go, it will bring you to heights unknown- you don't see this as much as it sees "you."

Tomlin makes you think, she makes you laugh, and she makes you human. I've never been exposed to anything quite like it.

The only real weakness I see is in structure- there is a long section dealing with feminism that appears out of place, but it is only out of place because all the other pieces are short and your mind is accustomed to the pace of the performances proceeding it- when a section comes out of nowhere being extended, your mind interferes with an awareness that this is being carried out longer than all the others and you wonder why- so your own thoughts intrude upon it- interrupting your enjoyment. It's not that the "feminist" part is any less brilliant- but it makes you separate it from the rest- which, in my view, is a misstep and a disservice to the entirety of the performance.

But that's a small mumble compared to what you get out of it. These words-this performance is what the word "art" was first imagined to mean. It's a masterpiece- one of the great works of art in the last thirty years- this will only build in reputation- it's a thinker's paradise- a cathedral of thought and perception- as clever as Voltaire and as meaningful as Rousseau. Your search has ended.

Lily Tomlin recreates her Tony-winning, one-woman Broadway show from 1985 for the screen, which received a limited theatrical run before appearing on Showtime (the film's production company) and picking up two Emmy nominations. Written by her partner Jane Wagner, Lily is featured both on-stage and in-costume as several different characters all on a quest to find the answers to Life. The film gets off to a funny start by misspelling "Intelligent" in the opening titles, but then stumbles a bit trying to find a compatible visual style for Tomlin's personality changes. The dryly witty lines delivered by the comedienne's incarnations come so fast that the ones you hope to quote are obliterated in your memory soon after by a topper (this is both pro and con). Of Tomlin's cast of characters, Trudy the Bag Lady is the least amusing (are bag ladies ever funny?). Still, there are universal truths here that should resonate with those attuned to Tomlin and Wagner's absurdist humor--if you can catch the cleverness on the fly. ** from ****

Actually, far from a great film in terms of technique – arbitrarily cross cutting between Lily Tomlin on stage, without costumes or sets (and oddly, also without an audience, but with over the top sound effects) and her playing the same characters in costumes and on sets (some naturalistic, some stylized).

For me it was a clunky and distracting approach.

However, the writing is so great and Tomlin's performance as her different characters is so memorable, so funny and so touching, that even a damaged version of this amazing one- woman show is better than none, by a long shot.

A brief note about the title. I watched it on a DVD distributed by Laugh.com (so it says on the DVD surface), rented from Blockbuster.com. The title on the surface is The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. I know this is not the original title; that the original title is intentionally misspelled. However, the opening credits of the video itself list it as The Search for Signs of Inteligint Life in the Universe. That is, the video's opening credits have the last vowel in 'intelligent' as an 'i', rather than an 'e', as IMDb has it. If this opening sequence is original to the production, not tacked on later, then IMDb's title is erroneous. I tried to add this variant at least as an alternate title, but it appears I lack the privileges to do this. So I've submitted this note. Should anybody who has the ability to make changes see this, please investigate further & make corrections as needed.

A bravura piece, by the way.

It's easy to see what made Lily Tomlin's popular one-woman stage show a successful theatre piece. But the belated big screen version distracts attention away from her chameleon-like skill with characters (created using only her voice and body language) by cutting at random from the actress alone on stage to Tomlin, in costume, portraying the characters against some stylized backdrops. At best it's an annoying attempt to open up the play with a lot of self-conscious cinematic 'style', but the material doesn't need all the visual hype. The impression is given that the filmmakers either didn't trust the material to stand on its own merits (unlikely, since Tomlin and writer Jane Wagner were the executive producers), or couldn't trust movie audiences to sit still for the entire length of an unembellished one-woman show. Thankfully, the memorable sequence condensing twenty years of feminist history into a ten-minute triple biography emerges unscathed, highlighting the balance of insight, humor and pathos missing elsewhere in the film.