O Outro Lado de Beverly Hills

This is a Jewish movie with the missing mom being a really key component. In the scene with Viv looking at the remote figure of the mom with two daughters as they leave to go shopping -- even (or especially) this mom who says big breasts are out of date, and who has provided her daughter with a nose job -- there is clear yearning for and respect for a mother. And in the responsibilities Viv is given and which she takes pretty courageously i'd say, she is a little mother to her family. Cousin Rita Abramovitz, on the other hand, is a female disaster, and Marisa Tomei's performance is spot on. Again, not comic. Human feeling and weakness showing through veneer of sexual energy. Our culture provides for sex first. Sex sells. There's a temporary sense of power, but this is not what people are. And Tomei gets that across. She disentigrates into illness. Elliott the pot dealer is drawn with accuracy and tenderness, recalling people i knew back then and illuminating them for me. The scene that was key for me in this motion picture is the father at his restaurant(with hair on his head in a lovely flashback)dealing with his cook. The meat. Could move the setting from Beverly Hills to the LaBrea tarpits . . . watching living creatures thrash and sink in the black goo of materialism.

It's summer 1976 Beverly Hills. Vivian Abromowitz (Natasha Lyonne) is a teen annoyed at her sudden boob growth. Her father Murray (Alan Arkin) keeps moving the broke family with her, and brothers Ben and Rickey to avoid paying rent. They stay within Beverly Hills limits so the kids attend the better schools. Cousin Rita (Marisa Tomei) has run away from an asylum and uncle Mickey is willing to pay his brother Murray if she could stay with them. Eliot Arenson is the pot-selling neighbor.

Natasha Lyonne is wonderfully awkward. There is some good dysfunction in this family but there is also some bad awkwardness. It's not a movie filled with big laughs. I could do without one particular uncomfortable scene. There is more good than bad in this movie. It's generally filled with good dry humor.

Bright performances are the reason to see Tamara Jenkins' Slums of Beverly Hills, since the situations offered up by the writing consist of the usual comedic complications writers call "quirky" and "zany." Following the nomadic existence of Murray Abramovitz (Alan Arkin), a 65-year-old wash-out father of two teenagers and their kid brother, the movie focuses on Vivian (Natasha Lyonne) the single-parent family's lone female. Vivian is exasperated by her newly sprouted breasts, and a significant measure of the film's comedy arises from this singular obsession. Most out of place is Marisa Tomei, who plays the flaky, pregnant, basket case of a cousin who comes to live with the family. Jenkins would have done well to leave out this completely unnecessary character and devote more time to the challenges faced by Vivian.

"Slums" is one of the more underrated films of the 1990s. It seems to rub some people the wrong way for unclear reasons, but I found it to be touching and hilarious from start to finish. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for Alan Arkin, whom I've always liked, and see on screen all to infrequently. More likely I was impressed by the witty script, deft direction and solid cast. I especially appreciated the spot-on portrayal of Southern California during the mid-70s, which just happens to be the era when I migrated from "back East" to Los Angeles. Fortunately, we weren't as hapless as the Abramowitz family, who throughout this film are trying desperately to hang onto the ragged edge of the good life.

This is one "coming of age" story that you don't need to be a teenage girl to enjoy.

i'm not quite sure exactly why i like this film but as the credits rolled i was smiling nonetheless. the orange/brown/pea-soup green 70's setting of it was one of the things i found authentic and quirky about it. the whole texture of the movies seems saturated by that awful color scheme, as though the whole world is being invaded and lorded over by kitsch. another more base reason is the infinitely watchable natasha lyonne as the blossomed teenager coping with an increasingly unstable world. first her family life and now even her body seem to follow wild and unpredictable spurts. she is obviously quite attractive and i would say the best actor/actress to come out of the American pie bunch and thus not surprisingly the most overlooked. the characters all seem believable to the point that one has to understand that some biographical elements are playing heavily into the story. that said brings to mind the old adage that truth is often stranger than fiction, and in this case it also is more entertaining.

7 out of 10