The symbolism isn’t subtle in Junebug, Phil Morrison’s full-length
directorial debut about the culture shock that can ensue when folks on
opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon Line meet. Written by first-time
feature scripter Angus MacLachlan, Junebug tells the story of Madeleine
(Embeth Davidtz), a worldly Chicago gallery owner who (metaphor alert!)
specializes in outsider art, and, on a trip to North Carolina to
solicit a local artist, visits her new in-laws with her husband of six
months, George (Laurel Canyon’s Alessandro Nivola). George hasn’t seen
his family in years and has pretty much abandoned his small-town roots.
And though the warm, affectionate, but very urbane Madeleine is
thrilled to meet her new kin—abrasive matriarch Peg (Celia Weston),
quiet dad Eugene (Scott Wilson), angry kid brother Johnny (The O.C.’s
Benjamin McKenzie), and Johnny’s young, pregnant wife, Ashley (Amy
Adams)—her sophistication and impetuous marriage to George make them
immediately suspicious of her. (“She’s too pretty and she’s too smart,”
Peg surreptitiously tells her husband. “That’s a deadly combination.”)

Both Morrison and MacLachlan are North Carolina natives, and it’s
arguable whether their portrayal of rural Southerners is stereotypical
or dead-on: George’s relatives are deeply religious, staunchly
simple-livin’ folk, accustomed to working with their hands and putting
family ahead of everything. Despite fine acting all around—Adams is
especially fascinating as sunny, curious chatterbox Ashley—MacLachlan’s
characters have some faults, most notably Johnny’s unexplained fury and
the eventually conflicting portrayals of George and Madeleine’s
attitudes toward his family, which vacillate too extremely between
dismissive and loving to feel realistic.

But Morrison’s quiet film is
affecting nonetheless: The Southerners’ icy reception of Madeleine is
palpable, as is the attraction between the newlyweds and Ashley’s
heartbreaking optimism about her baby and unspoken hope that the child
will bring some happiness to her joyless marriage. Ultimately,
Junebug’s small, honest moments of human connection and all the love
and sadness it can bring outweigh its flaws—just like the
family it portrays.

copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

Before you say you don’t like toilet humor, wait ’til you see a guy
pee on his own face. The 40 Year-Old Virgin is both as stupid as and
more brilliant than you might expect, with that gag as a prime example:
Yes, it’s crude, but after half a movie’s worth of surprisingly sharp
humor, a little dumbassery goes a long way.

The 40 Year-Old Virgin was co-written by former Daily Show
correspondent Steve Carell, who stars as Andy Stitzer, the unlaid schmo
of the title. Armed with helmet and hand signals, Andy rides a bicycle
to his job at an electronics store, where he trades “How was your
weekend?” chitchat with a co-worker. Andy made egg salad (and shopped
for its “accoutrements”); his fellow employee went to Tijuana to watch
a woman fuck a horse (“not as awesome as it sounds”). Excepting the
elderly neighbors he watches Survivor with, Andy is friendless, though
he insists he has “a very fulfilling life”—which includes playing the
tuba around his apartment, painting tiny figurines, and singing karaoke
to his empty living room.

Andy’s sorry existence gets a boost, however, when the guys from
work need another player for their poker game. Reluctantly, David (Paul
Rudd), Cal (Seth Rogen), and Jay (Romany Malco) ask Andy to join them.
When he cleans up, they gain some respect for him. Or at least until he
contributes to their locker-room talk with an enthusiastic but vague
story about his freakiest girlfriend—“And I’d be nailin’ her, and she’d
be like, ‘Oh, you’re nailin’ me!’”—and they discover that dude’s never
actually gotten any. Anyone who’s ever seen a teen comedy knows what
comes next: The guys resolve to hook Andy up ASAP.

Carell and director/co-writer Judd Apatow, contributor to the
revered but quickly canceled television series Freaks and Geeks and
creator of the similarly praised but ditched Undeclared, wisely chose
to make Andy an accidental outcast rather than a flat-out loser. Andy
knows exactly how to “be like David Caruso in Jade,” as Cal advises him
regarding approaching women, and he’s not desperate enough to accept
the cringe-inducing advances of his butchy boss, Paula (Jane Lynch).
He’s genial and quick, and so what if he’s decided to ditch dating in
favor of getting to bed early and “having more video games than a
teenage Asian kid”?

Despite Andy’s merrily dorky lifestyle, Carell mostly plays it
straight here, as he does in his latest steady gig, the American
version of The Office. It’s actually the rest of the characters who
induce the most guffaws: With the exception of a sorta-sickening
drunk-driving scene, The 40 Year-Old Virgin is packed with so much
sarcasm and deadpan that even bit players get to toss off a one-liner
before their minute of screen time is up. Rudd, Rogen, and Malco are
perfect as Andy’s hopelessly adolescent buddies, whether their
characters are venting about work (a running gag about a Michael
McDonald video is kicked off with David bitching, “If I hear ‘Yah Mo B
There’ one more time, I’m going to yah mo burn this place to the
ground”), criticizing Andy’s toy collection (“Is that the Six Million
Dollar Man’s boss?”), or ripping into each other (a series of exchanged
“Know how I know you’re gay?”s between David and Cal is a highlight).

Apatow and Carell even pull off a couple of minor miracles: (1) a
chest-waxing scene that’s actually funny and (2) a love story that’s
sweet without ruining all the joyful juvenility that came before it,
with Catherine Keener playing Andy’s eventual girlfriend, Trish. Of
course, it’s predictable that with Trish, Andy fails to heed any of his
friends’ advice. Also predictably, it turns out for the best. Here’s
the unconventional part: In the end, sex isn’t so transformative—a
lesson the film sells with surprising understatement. Andy is a
well-adjusted adult who becomes, well, a better-adjusted adult. After
all, even a middle-aged virgin knows that a few steps must be missing
from this description of “planting seeds” before making the big move:
“Now you wait for it to grow into a plant. And then you fuck the plant.”

Valiant, the first fully computer-animated feature from Britain, is
also about an underdog surrounded by a comic-relief crew. Unfortunately
for the kiddies, this story about a pint-sized pigeon is less a fable
about believing in yourself—or about, er, the heroic potential of
animals, which the epilogue touts—than a propaganda piece about serving
your country. Apparently the filmmakers overestimated the number of
filmgoing, World War II–Êobsessed 5-years-olds in the world. There
certainly can’t be that many in Multiplexland.

Valiant is set in 1944, when the title character (voiced by Ewan
McGregor) decides to fly off to London to join the Royal Homing Pigeon
Service. There he meets Bugsy (the original Office’s Ricky Gervais), an
unbathed street swindler who impulsively joins the service in order to
get out of some trouble. The two are sent off to train with the sorry
Squad F, led by Gutsy (Hugh Laurie). Before they’re even finished with
boot camp, though, the squad is sent off to Germany due to a loss of
troops to German falcons. Meanwhile, a pigeon POW named Mercury (John
Cleese) is being held by the evil General Von Talon (Tim Curry), who
tries to make his captive, um, sing (yes, the script uses this groaner,
too) by feeding him truth serum and playing yodeling records.

It’s the latter situation that yields Valiant’s only laugh, and it’s
a weak one at that: “I’m a vegetarian,” Von Talon tells Mercury. “And
yet you wear a leather cape!” the prisoner responds. With a script (by
Jordan Katz, George Webster, and George Melrod, none of whom have
previous credited experience writing for children) that otherwise
contains only the lamest of humor—“I may not be conscientious, but I
object!”—first-time director Gary Chapman falls back on the old
reliable, loading Valiant with shots of the decidedly uncuddly birds
smacking into walls, floors, doors, or each other. Oh, and Bugsy
belches and passes gas a lot. Needless to say, the film’s stellar vocal
talent—which also includes John Hurt and Jim Broadbent—seems rather
wasted.

Valiant’s sunniness and willingness to help out his friends may be
sufficient to keep a few non-warmongering kids involved for the film’s
blessedly brief 76 minutes. Whether they’ll warm up to the beaked
protagonists is another thing: The animation—courtesy of the Ealing
Studios–Êensconced Vanguard Animation—may be Pixar-precise, with each
bird’s feathers intricately detailed and most backgrounds sufficiently
lifelike (though the black water of the North Atlantic tends to look
like undulating Hefty bags). But these are pigeons, for crying out
loud, and chances are their bald-looking heads, buglike eyes, and
bulbous chests won’t make anyone pine for a plush version. And even
though the story is amiable enough—except, perhaps, for that
cryptofascist we-didn’t-start-this-war-but-it’s-our-duty-to-help
part—it’s punishingly dull for grown-ups. Unlike its hero, Valiant is a
long shot that doesn’t quite succeed.

copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

The secret door in the freaky attic doesn’t do it. Nor does the
knowledge that the last hospice worker high-tailed it outta there. And
even when her new employer and landlady says, “The house is theirs as
much as ours”—referring to some very dead former occupants—nosy nurse
Caroline (Kate Hudson) never seems to consider leaving her crickety
plantation digs. Of course, such boobery is de rigueur in horror films.
The big surprise of The Skeleton Key—bigger than even that twist ending
everyone’s talking about—is that it’s not much of a horror film to
begin with. Sure, director Iain Softley (back to Earth after K-PAX)
throws in a few of those dime-store jumps during his leisurely setup,
and Ehren Kruger’s script is full of, quite literally, hoodoo. But it
won’t have you hiding behind your hands like Kruger’s Ringu remakes.

When Caroline agrees to become the caretaker of Ben (John Hurt), an
elderly man who suffered a stroke while in the attic of this New
Orleans home, she immediately makes use of the skeleton key that his
tart wife, Violet (Gena Rowlands), gives her to access all 30 rooms of
the house. Violet pleads ignorance about the room Caroline finds behind
some shelves, but naturally Caroline goes in—and, at last, at the sight
of pickled body parts and hanged dolls, gets an inkling that
something’s pretty wrong. It’s all indicative of African-American folk
magic, a friend tells her, and when the supposedly paralyzed and mute
Ben starts climbing onto the roof and writing “Help me” on his
bedsheets, Caroline takes it upon herself to get him away from
whatever’s haunting him.

Hudson’s performance is as restrained as
Rowlands’ is acerbic, and Peter Sarsgaard, as Ben and Violet’s lawyer,
rounds out the classy cast. Among recent paranormal thrillers, however,
The Skeleton Key is more notable for its relatively original and
logical story, as well as for the way it settles into a mood of mild
eeriness instead of going for over-the-top frights. It’s also absorbing
and well-crafted, and it delivers an ending that’s satisfying and
smart—and these days, in this genre, that’s nothing short of magic.

copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

David Letterman must be feeling pretty bad. Included in Werner
Herzog’s Grizzly Man is a clip of the movie’s subject, self-anointed
“bear expert” Timothy Treadwell, as a guest on Late Show a few years
back. “Is it gonna happen that one day we read a news article about you
being eaten by one of these bears?” Letterman teasingly asked
Treadwell, who devoted 13 summers to living among grizzlies in Alaska.
Nervous laughter followed, but Dave’s joke would eventually become
very, very unfunny.

Treadwell and a companion, Amie Huguenard, were mauled and, yes,
eaten by one of the creatures they were allegedly protecting at Katmai
National Park and Preserve in 2003, just before they were set to leave
the Alaskan peninsula. What remained of their bodies—a rib cage, an
arm, a “head with a little bit of backbone attached”—was discovered by
the pilot who was to pick up Treadwell, as he’d been doing for years.
Two bears were destroyed when authorities got to the scene, one of
which ended up being eaten by other bears, the other “full of people,
full of clothing.”

The bulk of Grizzly Man is composed of a selection from the
approximately 100 hours of footage Treadwell filmed of his experiences
living in the wild, including the opening scene, onto which Herzog
superimposed Treadwell’s name and “1957–Ê2003.” It rather quickly
becomes clear that Treadwell, despite his dedication and seeming
expertise—he co-authored a book, Among Grizzlies, and lectured at
schools while back in the civilized world—was little more than a loon
with a tent.

Calling himself a “kind warrior” in his tapes, Treadwell often
rattled off the dangers of being as close as he was to the grizzlies,
but he never seemed to really believe anything could happen to him. He
insisted that he presented himself as a strong but nonthreatening
figure to the bears and would therefore be left alone. In several
instances, we do see a bear take a swipe at Treadwell as he tries to
touch it while cooing, “Hi, how are you? I love you!” We also see the
animals back off when Treadwell admonishes, “Don’t do that!” But as Sam
Egli, the helicopter pilot who assisted the cleanup crew, rationalizes,
“The bears probably left him alone for so long because they thought
that there was something wrong with him, like he was mentally retarded
or something.”

Definitely something. Singsong was Treadwell’s dominant tone,
whether he was telling a fox, “Thanks for being my friend,” confessing
his past alcoholism, or musing about why women don’t usually stick
around very long. (Maybe it’s because his bear fixation extended even
to their shit: “I can feel the poop!” Treadwell says as he touches a
giant pile from a favorite grizzly. “It just came out of her butt! It
was inside her!”) But he could just as quickly turn angry, yelling at a
bug for landing on a recently deceased fox’s eye (“Have some fucking
respect!”) or at God for a drought (“Let’s have some rain, Jesus boy!”)
or, in an extended rant, at the Park Service for, well, everything
(“Fuck you, fucking Park Service!”). In a diary entry after an argument
with an airline employee, Treadwell wrote about “how much I hate the
people’s world”; reportedly, he also often behaved like a bear.

At this, Herzog, who narrates, intones, “I have seen this man before
on a film set.” The director provides cool counterpoint to some of
Treadwell’s beliefs, whether through his own comments or the opinions
of his interviewees. The filmmaker especially disputes Treadwell’s
views on the predatory nature of animals, but he also tries to
explicate the bear-lover’s dangerous behavior. He interviews
Treadwell’s parents, who mention their son’s failure to land the role
of Woody on Cheers back when he was trying to become an actor. He talks
to friends and one former (and sorta daffy) girlfriend, Jewel Palovak,
who owns an audio recording of Treadwell and Huguenard’s deaths, made
by Treadwell’s somehow running but still lens-capped camera. A
headphoned Herzog listens to the tape in front of Palovak, then sternly
tells her, “You must never listen to this.”

Throughout Grizzly Man, the goofiness of Treadwell, with his blond
Prince Valiant haircut, repeatedly clashes with the horror of what
happened to him, which makes watching the movie an uncomfortable,
car-wreck-fascinating experience. Herzog’s ongoing, surprisingly
sympathetic argument with his subject adds a philosophical depth
missing in most talking-head documentaries. And though the director
might overdo the talking-to-the-animals stuff a bit, Treadwell’s merry
nuttiness grows sadder as his delusion becomes apparent—especially
after a scene in which he watches poachers throw rocks at a bear makes
it clear that he wasn’t there to “protect” the species at all.

Herzog, panning over an Alaskan landscape he describes as “in
turmoil,” suggests that the area is “a metaphor for [Treadwell’s] soul”
and that his story gives us insight into human nature. But Egli’s more
dismissive view of Treadwell works, too: “He acted like he was working
with people wearing bear costumes.”

The creators of The Aristocrats care about our furry friends as
well, as the end credits boast: “No animals were fucked during the
making of this film.” Yes, the statement is wrong, wrong, wrong—as is
the rest of the movie—but you shouldn’t feel bad about laughing at
anything here: It’s all just a joke.

The punch line of the joke is the film’s title, and if you’ve never
heard it, it’s because the bit is considered insider gold that
comedians traditionally use to entertain themselves. When director Paul
Provenza and executive producer Penn Jillette were discussing the
possibility of making a movie in which a bunch of comics tell the same
joke, the Aristocrats gag seemed a natural: The beginning’s the same;
the ending’s the same. And in between? A wide-open space in which the
performer gets to be as filthy or offensive as he or she wishes.

Provenza recruited more than 100 comedians to tell their versions of
the Aristocrats, which has been around since the days of vaudeville and
more or less kicks off with, “A man walks into a talent agency and
says, ‘Have I got a family act for you!’” Many of the contributors
discuss what’s so great about the routine—primarily, the opportunity it
provides for a jazzlike ad-lib—and in the process sometimes get a
little personal. Carrie Fisher talks about her mother, “the
golden-shower queen.” Sarah Silverman, completely selling her claim
that she was actually part of the setup’s original family act, realizes
during her otherwise wistful recollections that “Joe Franklin raped
me.” (Yes, she’s kidding.) Andy Richter and Doug Stanhope tell the
joke—complete with curse words and sexual deviance—to their cooing
infant children.

Obviously, nothing is taboo here. “I think you can put people to
death for what happens in the best versions of this joke,” says comic
Jake Johannsen. Throughout its 92 minutes, The Aristocrats regales
viewers with stories about shit-eating, bestiality, incest,
necrophilia, and vomit, and Provenza’s quick editing makes it play like
a wild-ride succession of stand-up bits that all kill. And frequently,
there’s sophistication in the deliveries, if not the context. Two of
the best come from Kevin Pollack, who tells the joke as Christopher
Walken, and Billy the Mime, who demonstrates that
performers of his ilk can actually be funny — perhaps the one thing more
shocking than a family circle-jerk around dead Grandma.

copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

“You decide what goes in the frame,” Sophie advises her photography
class in November. “But it’s also important what stays out.” Director
Greg Harrison and scripter Benjamin Brand obviously believe those words
wholeheartedly—even if they do come from Courteney Cox. Stylishly
recalling other time-twisting memory puzzlers such as Memento and
Mulholland Drive, November is more about hiding the narrative than
revealing it. The story focuses on Sophie, who’s recovering from the
traumatic event that opens the film: the death of her boyfriend, Hugh
(James LeGros), in a convenience-store robbery gone wrong. (If only she
hadn’t wanted that after-dinner chocolate…) Sophie is shown trying to
go on with her life, visiting a psychiatrist for seemingly
stress-related headaches as well as her guilt over a recent affair with
a co-worker. But when a slide of the convenience store, developed two
days after the robbery and shot the night Hugh died, mysteriously shows
up in one of her student’s presentations, it becomes apparent that
Harrison and Brand’s reality cannot be trusted.

November is divided
into chapters titled “Denial,” “Despair,” and “Acceptance,” three of
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ famed five stages of dying, and in each we get
variations of the film’s major events, from the crime itself to the
dinner Sophie has with her mother (Anne Archer). Shot and edited on
digital video for a reported $150,000, November belies its budget, with
Harrison lacing the often-silent film with plenty of creepy touches—a
staticky, incomprehensible phone call, the amplified creaks of an
apartment that’s unexpectedly lost one of its occupants, images of red
blood cells and a green field that flash when Sophie is in
mental-patient mode. OK, maybe it’s all a bit tired. But the film’s
whole fractured-reality, rewind-again story is executed divertingly,
and Cox nicely sheds her Friends persona to portray the thoughtful but
increasingly freaked-out Sophie. Ultimately, November has just enough
both inside and outside the frame to hold your interest—and at a
compact 73 minutes, it runs out of time well before you can run out of
patience.

copyright 2005 movie-babe.com

The kids in The Edukators are angry. Jule, a German waitress in debt
to an executive whose luxury car she wrecked, keys a Mercedes she sees
in her restaurant’s parking lot and calls the managers of a
sweatshop-supplied footwear store “capitalist pigs.” Roommates Jan and
Peter, meanwhile, prefer to break into rich Berliners’ homes and
rearrange their furniture, leaving behind anonymous notes—“Your days of
plenty are numbered,” say, or “You have too much money”—as well as,
they hope, a sense that the residents aren’t as safe in their tony
neighborhoods as they may have thought.

So these self-anointed “edukators” are full of rage, yes, but that
doesn’t mean they can’t fall in love: Turns out that Hans Weingartner’s
second feature is as much about changing the world as it is about
stealing your best friend’s girlfriend. Julia Jentsch is the initial
focus of the trio as the earthy Jule, whose 94,000-euro debt not only
saps her spirit but also gets her evicted. She then moves in with Jan
(Daniel Brühl) and Peter (Stipe Erceg), a Vincent Gallo–Êlooking punk
of a boyfriend who’s disdainful of wealth and all its trappings—but not
so much that he won’t swipe an occasional watch from the homes he and
Jan turn upside down.

The characters are grungy enough to match The Edukators’ cinéma
vérité style, rendered with handheld digital video by previous
Weingartner collaborator Matthias Schellenberg and My Brother the
Vampire vet Daniela Knapp. Both Jentsch and Erceg convincingly inhabit
their roles, but it’s Brühl who gives the strongest performance. The
most idealistic of the group, Jan is both overintellectual and
overemotional, spinning pie-in-the sky justifications of his and
Peter’s break-ins and rushing to the aid of a homeless subway rider.

When her former landlord’s demand to immediately clean up her
apartment prevents Jule from accompanying Peter on a short trip, he
arranges for Jan to help her. Jan’s always been indifferent to Jule,
but Peter insists his friend is “a loyal soul.” Awkwardness quickly
disappears as Jule and Jan bond over music and the details of her
financial predicament, which infuriates him: “If you keep working for
that asshole,” he tells her, “you’ll lose faith in everything.” When
Jule gets fired for covering up for a co-worker later that night, it’s
Jan who comforts her with food, booze, and diatribes on the “bourgeois
ethics” that keep people showing up to work on time and paying their
taxes.

Feeling invigoratingly close to her, Jan tells Jule about his and
Peter’s secret pastime, driving to a ritzy neighborhood and showing off
their van’s surveillance cameras. Jule is intrigued—and when she
realizes that they’re near the house of Hardenberg (Burghart
Klaussner), the guy she owes money to, she wants in. Jan reluctantly
agrees to enter the home, and they have a great time stacking furniture
to the ceiling and sharing a kiss in the indoor pool. The next day,
however, is sobering, as Peter returns and Jule realizes that she’s
left her cell phone at the scene of the crime.

At 127 minutes, the film, scripted by Weingartner and Katharina
Held, does overstay its welcome a bit, and you may roll your eyes when
Jeff Buckley’s seemingly ubiquitous “Hallelujah” kicks off a melancholy
montage. But these are quibbles. Overall, The Edukators is delicately
balanced, managing to keep both its crime-caper and love-triangle story
lines interesting. Surprisingly, the narrative really gets going after
a bit of melodrama is introduced: Jan and Jule’s second break-in, to
retrieve the phone, goes very wrong when Hardenberg shows up and
recognizes Jule, leading to a mea culpa call to Peter and an impulsive
kidnapping. The well-to-do enemy turns out to be a short, stocky, goofy
man you can’t help but feel a little sorry for. Once Stockholm syndrome
sets in, former hippie Hardenberg and his captors engage in discussions
that mostly revolve around the axiom “Under 30 and not liberal, no
heart; over 30 and still liberal, no brains.”

Amid all the conversation, ideas about free love, the uselessness of
modern rebellion, television as tranquilizer, the increased incidence
of mental illness, and what true happiness comprises are floated,
scrutinized, and tested. That no genuine connection is made between the
youthful revolutionary of yesterday and the youthful revolutionaries of
today is actually something of a relief. In the end, after all the
action and all the talk, no one really changes—which, despite The
Edukators’ complexity, seems to be its rather simple point.

Don Johnston, the protagonist of Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers,
isn’t rattled about the state of the world. Or about the fact that his
lovely companion is leaving him. Or, for that matter, about an
anonymous note that arrives in a pink envelope, saying that he has a
nearly 19-year-old son who may show up at his doorstep any day now.

Don’s livelier neighbor and confidant, Winston (Jeffrey Wright), is
sure excited about the news, though, and being a fan of detective
stories, he knows just how to go about hunting down the letter’s
author. He gets Don (Bill Murray) to make a list of the women he dated
20 years ago, does a little Googling, and presents Don with an
itinerary that will allow him to pay each of his exes a visit. Don,
apparently having nothing else to do but sit on the couch in a
tracksuit, reluctantly agrees to the trip.

Broken Flowers has been widely hailed as Jarmusch’s most mainstream
film to date, though it’s questionable whether the masses will have the
patience for it. As quiet as the grave site of one former paramour Don
visits on his journey, the script is full of the awkward, pause-ridden
conversation that has been Jarmusch’s trademark ever since 1983’s
Stranger Than Paradise. Otherwise, Don gets off the couch, then sits in
a car. He sits in an airport, then in a plane. Then he sits in a car
again. After he arrives at one of the women’s homes, he usually,
surprise, sits and waits for the lady in question.

The melancholy deadpan that Murray used to such aching effect in
Lost in Translation (and even, to some degree, in The Life Aquatic With
Steve Zissou) isn’t quite enough here. Don is more of a sleepwalker
than a silent sufferer, and even when it’s hinted that he really is
thrilled about the prospect of a son, his disappointment at every dead
end hardly seems to crush him. Jarmusch does allow his character the
occasional quip—without which his personality would be entirely
nonexistent. Even if their implication is that passing time can turn
even the most vivacious of men into the living dead, the frequent Don
Juan comparisons are hard to buy.

The women of Broken Flowers are a bit more three-dimensional, but
each, also rather unbelievably, is laden with quirks: Laura (Sharon
Stone) is a bit trailer-trashy and has a gorgeous teen daughter (Alexis
Dziena) who, oops, wanders in front of Don naked (and is also
unironically named Lolita). Dora (Frances Conroy) is a
hippie-turned-ladies-who-luncher who practically freezes around Don
(though the long dinner scene with the former couple and Dora’s husband
is one of the movie’s squirm-inducing best). Carmen (Jessica Lange) is
an “animal communicator” and lesbian convert. And Penny (Tilda
Swinton), well, she’s a hard-living redneck who doesn’t bother being
polite when Don shows up at her door.

Such scenes certainly enliven Broken Flowers, but it’s never clear
whether Jarmusch is making fun of these households or presenting them
as lovable oddities, glimpses of the lifestyles Don might have had. The
highlight of each encounter is the warmth Murray exudes when each woman
first sees Don, smiling as he waits for her to recognize him, but
besides Penny’s vitriol, we see little between Don and his exes to
suggest a shared history. This lack of connectedness, perhaps, is the
lesson of Don Johnston—the sudden late-life loneliness of someone who
never got too involved. But with a script and a performance that only
skim the surface, Broken Flowers never gets the audience too involved,
either.

copyright 2005 movie-babe.com