JohnTEQP

This is a very lyrical film, a character study with very good performances. As it introduces us to the four main characters, it starts out in several locations, and the connections between them are not obvious. Bear with the disjointed structure, however, because the vignettes are strong. The four guys are all flawed, some more so than others. The most apparently sympathetic character is the Mexican busboy who just wants to send money home to his family, and always seems to be smiling. His friendship with the British playboy doesn't seem to make sense, until you realize that they're both fairly mischievous; one just has more permission to be so than the other. The two slightly older guys both seem burned and despondent beyond repair, but each of them also desperately wants to believe in something again, and that something is love.

A reasonably fun movie, with some wonderful acting, but nowhere near the great film experience many are proclaiming it to be. Possibly the least suspenseful murder mystery I have ever seen. Beautiful sets, yes, but the interaction of the characters is so haphazard that great actors like Kristin Scott Thomas and Jeremy Northam can only be distinguished from the set dressing because they move. It's an apparently faithful recreation of the times, complete with decadence and snobbery, but to what end? And hasn't that been done a thousand times? Yes, the English aristocracy of the early 20th century were heartless snobs. And? I don't need Robert Altman to tell me this. What, after all, was the purpose of Masterpiece Theater? There are too many throw away plot elements, played by too many interchangeable characters to hold my interest or even to allow me the opportunity to care about any of them. Bob Balaban, who was also one of the producers of the movie, plays a Hollywood producer, making a movie about a murder mystery set in an English manor house. That would have been a nice touch if it weren't both thoroughly transparent and cliched, not to mention trivial and irrelevant to the plot. This kind of movie was parodied in Murder By Death man years ago, and Altman adds nothing new to the genre. I remember no more than 10 minutes of interesting plot developments. It's a technically competent and good-looking movie, with some fine moments, but it has all the significance of the forgotten songs that Northam plays on the piano. There are enough loose ends to generate a soap opera. If anyone cared.

Satires this good come along all too rarely. Payne's Citizen Ruth is my favorite political movie of recent history; this is just as good. Sharp, appropriately twisted, wickedly funny.