Almost You

I lived for awhile in NYC, and I liked this movie.

I spent some part of my life in virtually identical apartments. So maybe I am just being nostalgic. But watching this, I really felt like the people were much like real people I have known.

One thing I am sure of is the dialog is terrific. For instance when one character asked 'what do you do?' and got the reply, 'I am an actor' she immediately followed this up with: 'Oh, what restaurant?'.

At this stage in my life I prefer this to anything Woody Allen has done (or for that matter the two Edward Burns' movies I have seen).

Yes, the characters sit around drinking wine, and making small talk. And, yes, the lead is irresponsible, and feels far too sorry for himself. But the movie is really about the various women's perception of the lead, about their experience of him. Which makes it darkly amusing, and happily so not in the Allenesque, narcissist, self-deprecating style. The lead is a clown, but we aren't pressured to feel sorry for him. At all.

This movie is a trifle, kind of on the side of Annie Hall. But Almost You contains probably the worst acting performance ever committed to film, that of Marty Watt, who plays Kevin. This "actor" plays an up and coming "actor" and if you want to have a laugh riot, rent this movie just for this performance. I say this with all due respect.

Is this a comedy or a drama? The sometimes confusing narrative finds married man Griffin Dunne hiring and eventually having an affair with a young nurse who he had originally hired to help care for his wife (Brooke Adams) who had recently been left incapacitated following injuries in a car accident. This rather obscure 1985 20th Century Fox release suffers from being an originally good idea that just didn't get off the ground as well as one would have hoped.