uncre8tv

This is what I look for in independent film. Well drawn characters, competent movie making, and a pleasing ambiguity that a big studio wouldn't dare leave in, lest the audience actually decide how to feel for themselves. The guys are great - desperate, sleazy, charming, funny and sad. The girls are also portrayed fairly - scheming, sweet, sexy and innocent. Leguizamo's character is believable to me as an aging playa, chafing against middle age and lusting for Waterson's Shirley. And Shirley is the best on-screen pimp in recent memory. To be fair: things unfold a little quickly, people accept their situations a little easier than they might in real life, but this is a pretty short movie, and throwing in more angst would be overkill and overlong on screen. No one comes away clean, and no one comes away as the absolute bad guy. Moral absolutes would kill this film, and I'm glad it got made the way it did.

Jeff Daniels does his usual respectable job, Keaton mostly keeps the hysterics at bay, Anna Farris adds some dimension to her standard stoner chick, and Heder tries his best to not delve too deep into the Napoleon Dynamite well. Sarah Chalke is always a nice addition to any cast too. This is a decent indy movie, not great but far better than the 4.9 here. It was a victim of its marketing as much as anything. The story starts strong and finds a reasonable resolution without resorting to slapstick or painfully implausible plot twists. The cinematography was better than average - there's a great shot of Keaton framed by kitchen cabinets early on, and the lighting/exposure and set design are reminiscent of Little Miss Sunshine. Well worth picking up as a weekend rental or throwing in the online queue for some light viewing.

It's hard to wring fresh sentiment out of the melodrama of a family tragedy, and dressing the loss up in muted tones of 9/11 red white and blue doesn't make it any less tired of a road to wind down for a few hours. The stories shortcomings aside, this was a very well directed and acted movie. The lens framing was particularly interesting to me, always in tight on the subjects, their faces, panning out only so far as the width of a city street (or when Liv Tylers body was in the scene - go figure). Cheadle gives his typical well measured performance, and Sandler plays the dramatic bits well if you can forget that the voice he's using is the same as his Billy Madison. The movie goes in for a few emotional sucker punches, the only one connecting when Sandler confronts his inlaws after a particularly painful (in many ways) courtroom scene. This cast and director deserved just a little more meat on the scripts bones.