Divorce à Hollywood

Sharon Stone guest stars in Irreconcilable Differences, eight years before bursting to fame and into our consciousness in Basic Instinct. Anyway, this movie is probably more real than we think, with fame, fortune and lust all intertwined.

Maybe this movie can be rebooted, perhaps with British actors. If so, I nominate acclaimed English actor Danny Dyer to play Ryan O'Neal's role.

The actors in this movie make the characters seem very real and well-rounded. Drew Barrymore is Casey Brodsky, a child whose parents are going through a divorce. She can't take it anymore because they keep blaming/using her, so she decides to go to court to see if she can divorce herself from her parents. The movie is Casey's story as she tells it in court. It's a very cute movie for the whole family and I'm sure most of us have already seen it at least twice, but if you haven't then I'd recommend it.

The movie starts with a lawyer telling his client what it means to divorce. Then we find out his client is a precocious little girl.

In the courtroom, the girl's parents begin telling their story, which we see though flashbacks. Albert is hitchhiking across the country, and Lucy is taking her boyfriend's car to him, and refuses to stop but instead splashes mud all over Albert. Later Albert is freezing and wet and Lucy feels sorry for him ...

The movie is mostly a comedy as Albert and Lucy get to know each other and have a number of misadventures. But Albert, who has a new job as a film professor at UCLA, really wants to direct, and as he makes the contacts that will allow this to happen, he and Lucy see Hollywood life and hope that won't happen to them. Unfortunately ...

I liked the movie best when it was a lighthearted comedy. But something had to happen to make Casey want to 'divorce' her parents. Some of it was funny, and some hard to watch. Eventually, whenever the movie would take a dramatic turn, it would recover. And the ending was happy, in a way.

Shelley Long and Ryan O'Neal did a great job, and Long went through a number of character changes. Lucy started out adorable and perky but later became disillusioned and bitter. Then she became a confident ... witch (or something that rhymes, anyway).

Drew Barrymore was wonderful for a child. I saw a lot of good acting performances, and it would be hard to list them all. Sharon Stone was good as Blake Chandler, a bubblehead who for some odd reason became a star with Albert's help. Blake later showed more dimension to her character, displaying a warm side at one point and later a spoiled side as she expected star treatment. Another good performance came from the actress playing the housekeeper/nanny who apparently spent the most time with Casey. Not a lot of lines, but the character's professionalism and warmth came through.

It was a worthwhile movie.

Someone above said she's not real in this. I thought she was very real. Her closing comments to the court are priceless and truthful. Also funny and dramatic is star Shelley Long, who is sunk with bad hairstyles and colors throughout the film. Did she tee off the film's stylist? Ryan's excellent and looks hot. Sharon Stone's the funniest I've ever seen her. My favorite line: "Dammit, Dottie this Tab is warm! Really mother, for $600 a week I expect you to know the difference between hot and cold!" This film's comments on the Hollywood scene are great because Charles Shyer & Nancy Meyers have lived it. Underrated. DVD, please. p.s. Closing song is dated and maudlin, badly performed by Sinatra. Written by Peter Allen & Carole Bayer Sager. "You & Me (We Wanted It All)".

Say what you will about the Shyer-Meyers team ("Private Benjamin", "Father Of The Bride", "Baby Boom"), they know how to craft a movie, often exploiting every ounce of sentiment from their scripts. "Irreconcilable Differences" is somewhat of a departure for them however, a depiction of neurotic movie people, denizens of Hollywood, who have hardly any good points. As soon as the young couple finds success, it's a rich road downhill. The plot set-up has youngster Drew Barrymore trying to emancipate herself away from her famous mom and dad, and the H-Wood high-life is shown as both cause and effect. A terrific sequence involving Sharon Stone in a quasi-musical version of "Gone With The Wind" is satiric comic genius, yet the movie is so hard on its players, so brittle and tough, it's difficult to shake off the bad vibes even as the third act winds down to a sunny conclusion. Perceptively, the screenplay includes many awful (and awfully funny) truths about marriage, money and careers, but the cynical undermining of the picture may put fluff-oriented viewers off. ***1/2 from ****