Like the other reviewers I stumbled across this movie. I honestly didn't expect to enjoy it, but ended up being drawn into the storyline. I guess my sense of humor must be out of step with most current comedies because they're just not funny to me. It's easy for a movie to make me cry and very hard for a movie to make me laugh. So it's high praise when I say that I laughed more with Spin than I have at any movie I've seen in the last ten years. Simply thinking about certain scenes the next day would cause me to break out in uncontrolled laughing.
The version I saw was the under 80 minute TV edit. It's the story of one night at a club and the morning after from the point of view of six different characters all young (twenty-three years old ----- so we're told in the opening scene), beautiful and living in Southern California. The movie starts out slow, but it grows on you. Somewhere in the second vignette I was hooked. In the end, it's a tightly written script where all the pieces fit together wonderfully and with great humor. Spin is a screwball comedy for the modern era but has some moments of pathos in dealing with relationships.
In the first vignette, we're introduced to a character played by fifty-something Michael Biehn with one of the twenty-three year old girls. I'll admit that repulsed me, and I almost changed channels at that point. No matter how often Hollywood goes to the well of much older men with much younger women, I think that water's undrinkable. But it turns out that Michael Biehn was the hidden gem of this movie. I've only ever seen Biehn in serious, intense roles. I don't think I've seen him play any part other than a soldier or a cop (oh, and one sociopathic cowboy). This was the first comedy I've seen him in, and Michael Biehn has a real gift for comedy with impeccable comic timing. Watching his performance in Spin made me regret that Biehn's been so typecast in non-comedic roles.
The movie's focus is on the twenty-three year old characters, and I found the young actors to be very interchangeable, particularly the females. I didn't think any of the young actors put their own stamp on their characters so that I couldn't imagine anyone else playing that role. Pretty much any other actor with that physical type could have played the role, and I wouldn't notice the difference.
But I'll give chops to the older guy. Michael Biehn's been acting for longer than most of the young actors have been alive, and experience counts for something.
Overall, the strength of Spin was definitely from its script, so kudos to Henry Pincus for writing the funniest movie I've seen in many a year.
