“Your disability is that you’re an asshole!” a caretaker tells the
wheelchair-bound title character of Rory O’Shea Was Here. If it’s
well-deserved, it’s also something of a shock: In Irish director Damien
O’Donnell’s paint-by-numbers weepy, the attitudinal punk with a mouth
that compensates for all his nonworking parts is supposed to shake up
an institution and be frowned upon by authority but end up beloved by
all. And, of course, he should also teach us a lesson. But no one’s
supposed to call him an asshole!

Rory (James McAvoy) is a pierced, spiky-haired 20-year-old with a
rapidly degenerative form of muscular dystrophy. The disease has left
him with the use of only two fingers, as he announces to the titillated
residents of his new adult-care home in a spirited speech that
culminates with “You can shake my hand or kiss my ass, but don’t ask me
to reciprocate!” Determined to make the most out of his time there,
Rory befriends Michael (Steven Robertson), a young man with cerebral
palsy and a severe speech impediment. Though Michael has to laboriously
spell out words to the people who run the facility, Rory understands
him—and quickly talks him into behaving badly. Naturally, supervisor
Eileen (Brenda Fricker) glowers as hard as she can—especially when the
two conspire to live independently, despite the fact that Michael has
been in homes his entire life.

Like the recent Assisted Living, Rory O’Shea is an uncomfortable mix
of comedy and melodrama, with East Is East vet O’Donnell trying to
wring as many laffs as he can out of Jeffrey Caine’s script before
things turn serious. And although Rory’s juvenile one-liners are pretty
funny (translation of one of Michael’s unintelligible remarks: “I think
he said, ‘You’re a prick’”), Michael is too often primed for more
condescending chuckles: Aww, he tried to spike his hair, too! Ho ho,
look at how he keeps dropping his toothbrush!

At least until Rory O’Shea morphs into a series of Very Special
Episodes as the guys face life on their own, with story lines that
include confronting Michael’s estranged father, trying to check out an
apartment with no wheelchair access, and Michael’s falling hard for
Siobhan (Romola Garai), the pretty personal assistant the pair
improbably hires. The appearance of Siobhan—a former store clerk who
easily decides to devote her life to these two and picks up the highly
specialized skills required to care for them overnight—is only one of
several hard-to-believe moments, though certainly not the most
confounding. That would be when Rory goes joy-riding with a bunch of
local kids—in the driver’s seat.

Such glitches aside, both actors pull off exceptional performances.
Robertson is flawless in his depiction of Michael, never making one
move or expression that would make you question his character’s
illness—though some of his lines are conveniently clearer than others,
likely to prevent the tedium of having Rory repeat everything he says.
McAvoy, meanwhile, is exactly the charming rogue he’s meant to be, even
eking out some sympathy for a character who isn’t much more than hell
on wheels. And, yes, in the end Rory even teaches us a lesson—just not
quite as gracefully as the filmmakers might wish.

Keanu Reeves’ character in Constantine is another unlikely badass,
confined not to a wheelchair but to…service to the Lord. Like a
divine Dirty Harry, John Constantine—or J.C., if you will—growls Latin
prayers between drags on his cigarette and punches demons back to Hell
when the in nomine patri route just won’t do. And when Constantine
needs to strong-arm one of Satan’s helpers for a little 411? Dude, a
sweet last-rites fake-out and some brass knuckles are all he needs to
get the job done.

Not since the Crusades has Christianity seemed so gangsta. But don’t
worry—Constantine remains more comic book than Good Book. Based on the
DC/Vertigo comic Hellblazer, the movie contains enough whiz-bangedness
to prevent any Sunday-school messages from getting across too
obviously. Unfortunately, thanks to co-writers Kevin Brodbin and Frank
Cappello—and, to a lesser extent, first-time director Francis
Lawrence—not much else gets across, either. In terms of recent horror
turkeys, Constantine is more Hide and Seek than Alone in the Dark: With
slick production, subtle creepiness, and even Devil’s Advocate–Êquality
acting from Mr. Whoa, it just may take you until the closing credits to
realize how stupid the film really is.

It helps, too, if you aren’t familiar with Constantine’s source
material, in which our antihero is blond, British, and said to have
been modeled on Sting—in other words, pretty much the opposite of Keanu
Reeves. Once Reeves was cast, the filmmakers—perhaps fearing the accent
he unleashed in Bram Stoker’s Dracula—decided to make Constantine
American, and they also tweaked his backstory: J.C.’s lot as a demon
slayer is a consequence of a teenage suicide attempt that, as all good
Catholics will know, left a mortal mark on his soul and, in his case, a
short time to enjoy his restored life. His childhood misery stemmed
from a curse that allowed young John to see “half-breeds,” or the
part-human/part-spirits who’ve been sent from Heaven or Hell to sway
mankind to play for their respective teams. Now Constantine can still
see them skulking around Los Angeles, and because he’s being eaten away
by lung cancer, he’s trying to score points with the man upstairs by
returning the evil ones whence they came.

The suspicious suicide of a devoutly Catholic mental patient,
Isabel, leads her twin sister, police detective Angela Dodson (Rachel
Weisz), to seek guidance from Constantine, whose name was whispered by
Isabel before her death. It’s around this point when you’ll stop
following along: Turns out Angela and her sister (also played by Weisz)
used to see half-breeds, too. After Constantine does a quick check of
Hell—a trip facilitated by, I swear, a bucket of water and a cat—he
determines whether Isabel actually did commit suicide, and
then…something. It involves random demon attacks, an evil half-breed
named Balthazar (Gavin Rossdale), and a freaked-out priest who suddenly
can’t get booze out of any bottle in the liquor store. Oh yeah, and the
Spear of Destiny, whose owner is supposed to have “the fate of the
world in his hands” and which was found at the beginning of the film by
some Mexican—who is sporadically shown walking, presumably, to Los
Angeles.

Lawrence, who’s, yes, a former music-video director, resists going
for cheap scares, instead making your spine chill with, say, a quiet
closeup of Isabel’s dead eyes or the good ol’ someone’s-on-the-ceiling
introduction to possession. The CGI demons are appropriately menacing
(except for one who suddenly shows a cheesy face), as is the underworld
milieu in which Constantine travels (including a requisitely goth
half-breed-friendly bar). And as laughable as the sight of Reeves
holding a kitty with his feet in a bucket is, the fantastical sequence
that follows is anything but: You may wonder why Hell is so damn windy,
but Lawrence and Big Fish cinematographer Philippe Rousselot’s
fiend-filled, darkly orange wasteland is easily Constantine’s most
compelling visual.

Of course, those are just random moments of success. Almost
everywhere else, Lawrence allows himself to be eclipsed by Brodbin and
Cappello, who fail spectacularly to tell a clear story—though they at
least sprinkle in some dry humor. Constantine, for example, gets
annoyed at anything that reminds him of his death sentence, from a
billboard proclaiming “Your time is running out!” to an elevator-mate’s
query of “Going down?” And there is a last-act reprieve from the
increasingly leaden denouement in the form of Peter Stormare’s wickedly
Vegas-esque Satan. But it’s still impossible to see Constantine as
anything other than a fall from grace: First you laugh with it. Then
you laugh at it.

Copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

Hope this isn’t too much of a spoiler, but in Hitch, Will Smith
plays a perfect man. Smith’s character, Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, is
good-looking and successful, charming and ethical, smart and smooth. A
legendary “date doctor” who promises clients he can help them nab the
women of their dreams, Hitch is the sort of gentleman who advocates
listening to a woman, showing her respect, and using lots of
ingenuity—and by “ingenuity,” I mean money—in the wooing process. And
he practices what he preaches: Instead of seeming pushy and calling a
special lady at work when she hasn’t yet given him her number, Hitch
sends over a messenger with a gift-wrapped walkie-talkie and an outfit
for the date invitation that the whole office hears—and she just had to
accept. Isn’t that darling?

By the time said date gets to the private tour of Ellis Island with
a security guard who gushes, “Anything for Hitch!” you may already be
sick of him. But that’s OK, because Andy Tennant’s romantic comedy
balances Smith’s überdudeness with the welcome buffoonery of Kevin
James. The stand-up-circuit vet plays Albert, a Manhattan accountant
who’s been drooling over his firm’s biggest client, celebrity heiress
Allegra Cole (Amber Valletta). And here James is far from the
confident, more-of-me-to-love character he’s known for in King of
Queens. Instead, he’s sloppy and accident-prone, and he interrupts his
uncharacteristically assured dancing with mental notes such as “I start
the fire; I make the pizza!”

Sadly, Tennant’s follow-up to Sweet Home Alabama deflates whenever
James isn’t onscreen, and its focus shifts toward the potential power
couple of the story: Hitch, naturally, and Sara (Eva Mendes), a
happy-to-be-alone (yawn) gossip columnist who can’t resist him. At
least until she gets a skewed idea of what he does, of course. Then she
tries to expose him as the no-good Yoda of womanizers that she believes
him to be.

Clearly, screenwriter Kevin Bisch has thoroughly raided the reserves
of rom-com standbys for his shallow first effort. We get cardboard
characters who are “guarded” because other people tell them they are.
We get dialogue such as “Life is not the amount of breaths you
take—it’s the number of moments that take your breath away!” (Not to
mention Hitch’s explanation of why he jumps in front of—and gets hit
by—Sara’s car: “Because that’s what people do!”) We get stock scenes
such as the playful music-accompanied first date (way too long), the
sobbing run out of the room (twice!), and, most unfortunately, the laff
riot that is physical infirmity (Hitch gets high on Benadryl!).

No surprises there. But here’s one: Hitch is just barely—and I mean
barely—saved from its numerous oh-please moments by the cast’s star
power. However irritating his character is, Smith can’t help but make
us like him for a moment or two, and Mendes’ no-nonsense Sara is a
refreshing departure from the skanks the actress is usually stuck
playing. And James? Well, anyone who can get laughs out of the Stupid
White Man Dance—especially after a painfully unfunny version has been
played ad nauseam in trailers—is worth suffering through the mediocrity
for. When Hitch starts limping toward its I-can’t-live-without-you
conclusion, you can just picture Albert making his pizza.

Bride and Prejudice also suffers from plenty of romantic-comedy
clichés, from a forehead-slapping ethnic mother to a bickering but
meant-to-be couple. OK, OK, since this Bollywood-style musical from
Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha is yet another take on
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, its predictable luv arc can be
forgiven. But Chadha’s contribution to Valentine’s Day box office
doesn’t rise above its flaws for a few reasons: (1) Its dancing isn’t
funny. (2) Its buffoon isn’t funny. And (3) its star power consists of
Martin Henderson, previously of Torque.

At least you’re supposed to hate his character. Henderson plays Will
Darcy, a wealthy American hotelier who travels to India with his friend
Balraj Bingley (Naveen Andrews), a barrister whom Mother Bakshi (Nadira
Babbar) has in mind for her eldest of four daughters, Jaya (Namrata
Shirodkar). At the wedding party/matchmaking soiree the pals attend,
Darcy—in what ends up being the only action that shows he’s not
completely brain-dead—is immediately drawn to the ridiculously
attractive Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), the headstrong second-eldest Bakshi
sister. She, naturally, is just as quickly turned off by Darcy’s
dismissive comments about her country. Or maybe it’s his complete lack
of a personality—tough call.

Chadha, who co-wrote the script with Beckham collaborator Paul
Mayeda Berges, doesn’t waste any time in establishing the pattern
she’ll follow for most of the movie’s 111 minutes: elaborately
choreographed dance sequence, Lalita scowling, Darcy staring, Mom
cracking wise about dying poor and grandchildless. Repeat. Kicking the
story off at the wedding party must have seemed like a great idea, with
the good-looking cast decked out in bright formal wear and lots of
high-energy boogieing to establish a jubilant mood.

But despite all its colorful spectacle—even the shopkeeps sing and
dance, and look at those silly, sari’d transvestites!—Bride proves
sorely lacking in the joyfulness that defined Chadha’s last effort.
Perhaps next time she should return to telling a story the traditional
Western way: Though the dancing in the bigger numbers is suitably
eye-catching, Bride’s musical interludes are often interminable
momentum-breakers, with songs (by Anu Malik and Craig Pruess) that are
bland at best and insidiously irritating at worst. (Try getting that
endless chorus of “No life—without wife/Oh yeah, yeah, yeah!” out of
your head).

Not that the script itself is so compelling. Filling in Austen’s
outline with the very broadest strokes, Bride seeks laughs mainly from
Babbar’s overweight, constantly maligned mother and the
U.S.-transplanted Mr. Kholi (Nitin Chandra Ganatra), a wife-hunting
businessman who’s sloppy and vulgar but is deemed a suitable husband
for Lalita because he is rich. Of course, Lalita scowls at Kholi even
harder than she does at Darcy, all the while swooning over Wickham
(Daniel Gillies), an English acquaintance of Darcy’s whom the American
warns her to stay away from. Even if you’re not familiar with the book,
it’s pretty clear who will end up winning Lalita’s heart.

Rai, a Bollywood queen and former Miss World whose
most-beautiful-woman-on-the-planet title isn’t all that ill-fitting,
does an adequate job with her first English-speaking role, thin though
it may be. (Perhaps it’s because she was already familiar with Austen,
having starred in the Sense and Sensibility–Êbased I Have Found It in
2000). Henderson’s wooden turn as Darcy, however—never smugly
attractive nor boyishly smitten, nor anything but stone-dumb—makes
Keanu Reeves look like Marlon Brando.

Obviously, a film like Bride and Prejudice is meant for a certain
audience—the apparently irony-free Chadha has described it as
comprising “mainstream and…diasporic Asians”—and there are probably
plenty of people who’ll be tickled by its facile flash and
treacle-soaked scenes of couples on the beach or running through
fountains. But as Lalita’s mother says in defense of her matchmaking,
“There’s nothing wrong with having standards, is there?”

Copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

It was almost called Sword Swallower—that’s the part you didn’t know.
Deep Throat, the 1972 porn flick that starred Linda Lovelace as a woman
whose clitoris was in her craw, is the most profitable movie ever made.
It’s considered a cultural landmark, one of the first hardcore movies
to boast a plot and to be widely released; it engendered obscenity
charges by the Nixon White House. The uproar that resulted put
mainstream audiences in X-rated seats, “blowjob” in the nation’s
lexicon, and ideas in directors’ heads. Why, if not for Deep Throat,
there’d be no Britney Spears, no girls going wild, and no sex for any
reason other than procreation. OK, you didn’t know that, either, but
Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato sure do. Their Inside Deep Throat, a
documentary on the Little Porno That Could, is part Inside the Actor’s
Studio puffery, part Behind the Music sensationalism, and pretty much
one long, um, blowjob. The filmmakers (who also helmed 2003’s Party
Monster) feature commentary from people such as John Waters, Camille
Paglia, Erica Jong, and Norman Mailer, as well as those involved with
making the movie, including director Gerard Damiano, now a little old
man with pants up to his armpits, and co-star Harry Reems, whose
spectacular posthype downfall turned him into not only a drug addict
and nonfunctioning alcoholic, but also a panhandler. But the darker
aspects of Deep Throat, such as Lovelace’s years-later accusation that
boyfriend Chuck Traynor forced her into the industry, are touched on
only glancingly. (Some archival footage of Lovelace, who died after a
car accident in 2002, is included, but the extent to which Traynor
influenced her is alluded to only by her sister Barbara’s comment
“Unfortunately, he died before I could kill him.”) Mostly, Bailey and
Barbato are concerned with presenting Deep Throat gush (“100% on the
Peter Meter!”) and cheerily damning the puritanical mind-set that
resulted in the movie’s forced closing (prosecution statements intercut
with an echo of “clitoris…clitoris…clitoris”). If that makes the
result long on laughs—and how could a documentary on a film with lines
like “What if your balls were in your ear?” be anything but?—it also
makes it a bit short on serious treatment of the anti-porn persective.
In that department, the best the movie can do is Deep Throat prosecutor
Larry Parrish’s suggestion that the Justice Department is rarin’ to
fight obscenity again—if only, he says, “We can get these terrorists to
go away.”

Copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

In the last chapter of Fascination, a couple of characters throw around
the term “crazy idea” to describe the thriller’s whodunit scenario.
Here’s a crazy idea, perfect for the studio not-so-fittingly named
Quality Films: Don’t release a movie co-written by the scripter of
Emmanuelle, Queen of the Galaxy and starring Jacqueline Bisset and, God
help us, the dude who voiced Kangaroo Jack. German TV director Klaus
Menzel’s Fascination is Showgirls-terrible, from the first frames,
which establish the drowning of a “champion swimmer,” to its endless,
mostly clothed sex scenes to its unintentionally hilarious dialogue,
courtesy of Menzel, Emmanuelle’s Daryl Haney, and newcomer John Jacobs.
The plot involves a fabulous widow (Bisset); her angry composer son,
Scott (Jack’s Adam Garcia); and Oliver and Kelly (Stuart Wilson and
Alice Evans), the suspicious father and daughter who romance the pair
after they bury poor drowned Dad.

But it’s a lot more fun to trace the
story by connecting the ridiculous things that come out of these
characters’ mouths than by actually keeping track of the increasingly
ridiculous action. Here, for example, is Mom’s defense of her sudden
decision to remarry: “If we put it off, and he goes back to
London…Things happen sometimes!” And her subsequent fight with Scott:
“For someone so young and as artistically inclined as you, you’ve
gotten extremely judgmental!” For pure entertainment value, however,
you can’t beat the relationship between Garcia’s alternately wooden,
goofy, and hysterical Scott and Evans’ overly enunciating Kelly, which
is developed—how else?—through a series of howlers. There’s Scott’s
sob-story wooing (“When I was young, I had this severe bout with
scoliosis”), Kelly’s first move (“Let me kiss you through the pain”),
and, of course, the bad yet appropriate poetry that results (“I love
you so much, it’s beyond sense or reason!”). Throughout, it’s clear
that the scripters couldn’t make up their minds whether Scott is the
naive kid who stares open-mouthed at his mother making out with a new
guy (and who actually gives a version of "You’re not my real dad!") or the sophisticated adult who thinks to dig up his father’s body
for a toxicology report. They also neglected to notice such plot
whoopsies as a secret that’s supposed to be revealed toward film’s end
but is pretty much spelled out at the beginning. But when Kelly tries to convince Scott not to judge unexpected
developments by suggesting, “It’s like me and you! We’re like an
accident!” they get at least one thing right.

Copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

In the Realms of the Unreal

Directed by Jessica Yu

Assisted Living

Directed by Elliot Greenebaum

Henry Darger would have hated the attention. The subject of Jessica
Yu’s documentary In the Realms of the Unreal, the Chicagoan was a
lifelong recluse and likely schizophrenic who died in a poorhouse in
1973. Previously, Darger had spent 40 years living in a rented room,
holing himself up after shifts as a janitor or dishwasher in local
hospitals and rarely interacting with people, though other residents
reported hearing what seemed to be conversations through his door.

After Darger’s former landlords cleaned out his room and discovered
the volumes of drawings and writing that had apparently been serving as
his social outlet, Saturday-night entertainment, and entire universe,
Darger suddenly became of interest to the world he shunned. His work is
now displayed in museums and outsider-art galleries across the country,
and in Realms of the Unreal, Yu takes ballsy liberties with Darger’s
unwitting legacy, animating his illustrations and having an actor read
from his journals. Neither his landlords nor this filmmaker seems to
care about Darger’s most frequent request to those around him: “Leave
me alone.”

Yu’s film, 81 minutes of PBS-ian reverence, is a sometimes
fascinating but often tedious mix of biography, art, and interviews
with anyone who ever knew Darger, however peripherally. These accounts,
mostly from neighbors and parishioners who saw the artist at the
Catholic services he attended daily, prove how little Darger mattered
to anyone while he was alive: No one can agree on the pronunciation of
his last name, for example, or whether he always sat in the front,
middle, or back of the church. By the time he was 13, Darger had no
family—both of his parents had died, and the whereabouts of a younger
sister were unknown—and only one known friend, who died 25 years after
he and Darger last spoke.

Dakota Fanning, the movie’s young narrator, begins Darger’s life
story by mythopoetically intoning, “Once upon a time, a little boy was
born.” Realms of the Unreal then shadows Darger from the years he spent
in the Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children in rural Illinois to his
escape at age 17 to the big city, where he remained until his death at
81. Though he always managed to keep a job, Darger was pretty much
considered crazy, frequently seen digging through the garbage for
pictures of little girls and dodging personal questions with details of
the weather forecasts he obsessively tracked—and recorded in notebooks
next to the twine he collected.

It was the discovery of Darger’s creative pursuits that changed his
label from “crazy” to “eccentric”—specifically, a 15,000-page
illustrated novel titled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What Is
Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War
Storm, as Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion. Darger’s epic narrative
focuses, for lack of a better word, on the battles of the seven
preadolescent Vivian Girls, angel-faced and masculinely genitaled
warriors who fought against child slavery and other injustices
perpetrated by adults. Frequently naked, the girls often sported not
only penises but also ram’s horns or wings; painted onto untold yards
of butcher’s paper, they were placed in settings ranging from pastoral
to blood-soaked. Accompanying the illustrations are the Vivian Girls’
incredibly detailed adventures, the text of which includes meticulous
lists of war costs, casualties, and battle plans.

Yu doesn’t include any expert opinions about the quality of Darger’s
work, so the audience is expected to be awed solely by the volume and
intricacy of his output—both of which are inarguably mind-boggling. But
not as much as some of Darger’s extraliterary pursuits: The garbage-can
pictures he collected were mostly of barely dressed children, such as
the famously bareassed Coppertone toddler. And though children are the
heroes of Darger’s work, his frequent depiction of gutted and even
crucified kids seems even more troubling in light of his obsession with
a murdered 5-year-old named Elsie Paroubek, whose newspaper photo was
one of his prized possessions.

The girl was fictionalized as a martyr in Darger’s novel, but Realms
of the Unreal, besides making no judgments about Darger’s fixations,
fails to reveal much about his creative process. His life and work are
both presented as subjects to be marveled at rather than examined.
Symptomatic of that approach is Fanning’s narration, an odd combination
of little-girl preciousness and dry biography that merely accents the
freakiness of Darger’s work. Even worse, Yu rarely shows the paintings
in their original stretched-out glory, instead depending on
context-free close-ups or, more dangerously, animating the scenes and
adding sound to inappropriately Monty Python–esque effect.

Neither quirkiness nor quantity seems reason enough to hold Darger’s
work in regard, and the evidence that his mind was not only unhinged
but also possibly dangerous makes his life’s project seem less like art
than pathology. Yu, hands-off to a fault, doesn’t really argue the case
either way. But perhaps that’s for the best: After hearing her film’s
numerous testaments to Darger’s desire for solitude, even this shallow,
well-intentioned probe of his deeply personal creation will feel like
an intrusion.

You can’t imagine that the real nursing-home residents who appear in
the mostly fictionalized Assisted Living are too happy about being
documented for posterity, either. Then again, it seems as if a few
weren’t even aware that there were any cameras around. First-time
writer-director Elliot Greenebaum filmed his story about a slacker
janitor’s last day on the job in three operating Louisville, Ky.,
adult-care centers, blending his actors in with real people who are
wheelchair-bound, bedridden, or simply forgotten by their families. The
conceit is manipulative to the extreme, but it succeeds in making the
movie’s central relationship even more devastating.

Todd (Michael Bonsignore) is the charismatic but fuckup-prone
custodian who sometimes helps out with the residents even though he can
barely take care of himself. Living with a couple of slovenly guys who
settle in for a day of TV-watching as he leaves for work, Todd gets
dressed in the car and sparks up before his shift. He’s perpetually
late and largely goofs off once he does arrive, riding in empty
wheelchairs and talking to residents on the phone, pretending to be
their dead relatives calling from heaven.

The leeway that the staff gives the well-liked Todd narrows,
however, when his antics become detrimental to Mrs. Pearlman (Maggie
Riley), a proud, impeccably groomed resident in the early stages of
Alzheimer’s. She becomes attached to Todd, waiting for him to take her
to bingo and occasionally mistaking him for her estranged son. But when
one of Todd’s pretend calls leaves the worsening Mrs. Pearlman sobbing
as she collapses to the floor, even he knows that his game has gone too
far.

For much of Assisted Living’s 77 minutes, we simply see the home
through Todd’s bloodshot eyes as he walks around with his mop and
bucket: an exercise room in which techno music thumps as a circle of
hunched old ladies toss around a beach ball, a folk singer warbling “On
the Sunny Side of the Street” to a group of invalids, a staffer using a
condescending singsong to respond to a shriveled man’s report that
there’s a dead squirrel outside. Throughout, Greenebaum keeps the
dialogue to a minimum; this is a script as quiet as a roomful of
seniors watching their stories.

Riley is the only one of Assisted Living’s professional actors who
plays a resident, though the heart attack and two strokes she’s said to
have suffered during filming probably contributed to the realism of her
character’s increasing weariness. Bonsignore is fascinating as the
well-meaning but shortsighted Todd, whose demeanor convincingly goes
from cocksure (during those usually joyfully received phone calls) to
little-boy scared (when he has to retrieve a bucket from a room
reserved for the especially infirm).

Greenebaum’s un-self-conscious camera, documenting the drone that is
the residents’ daily existence, editorializes where his script doesn’t.
Left in the hands of employees who are just there for a paycheck, these
people, alone or too burdensome for their families to care for, clearly
aren’t being treated as “historical treasures,” as Assisted Living’s
fictional facility administrator calls them. Though most viewers will
probably relate to Todd’s obvious discomfort around the seniors, Mrs.
Pearlman’s palpable pain will make them wish they didn’t.

Copyright 2005 movie-babe.com