Gideon Jacobs is best known for playing Aaron -- the smart young camper who gives Gail, played by Molly Shannon, advice about men -- in 2001's satirical comedy, "Wet Hot American Summer." Guess what he looks like now! Read more...
- 7/17/2015
- by TMZ Staff
- TMZ
"Rocky" meets "Rain Man" in female clothing here at the Sundance Film Festival, which although wildly erratic as a movie, might have had some potential as a skit within "The Player". Starring Lili Taylor as a Jersey mom with a blue-collar family who has been suppressing a secret yen for theoretical physics, "Julie Johnson" is a well-intentioned muddle that you have to see to disbelieve. Unfortunately, "Julie"'s every decent theme of equal opportunity for women, which the film so earnestly embraces, is subverted by its soapy, drippy storytelling. So daft is this PC piffle that one can only conclude that it might have been perpetrated by a sinister cabal of reactionary right-wing male chauvinists to discredit feminism. Did we mention that Courtney Love co-stars as Julie's confidante, her go-for-the-physics chum?
Embroidered with the thickest of blue-collar story apparel, "Julie" centers on a beleaguered, overworked Hoboken wife, Julie (Taylor), who trudges through life, essentially, as a beast of burden. Her old-school hubbie, a cop (Noah Emmerich), is two rungs below Archie Bunker and wants his brewskis on the table with supper at the same time every night. He treats her like the hired help, and it's his condescending wrath that makes Julie hide the science magazines she has bought for years at the grocery store (evidently Hoboken has more sophisticated checkout-line reading matter than, say, Westwood). One typical night, between Beer 1 and Beer 2 at the table, Julie drops her freedom-of-expression mandate on hubby: She wants to go back to school to get her GED and then maybe study computers. The kids gulp and hubbie roars, and Julie scampers back to the kitchen.
Julie is plucky, however, and soon announces that she's going to school with or without his permission. Not surprisingly, her hirsute mate objects, and she throws him out, much to the shock of her two teen and preteen kids (Gideon Jacobs and Mischa Barton). Has this physics thing warped her mind, or is it just an excuse to get rid of The Old Man? We're never completely sure, owing to the surface transparency of the writing, but we gather that Julie, unlike Edith Bunker, is just sick and tired of being "stifled," regarded merely as a beer- and sex-dispensing machine.
Even her best friend, Claire, believes Julie's sudden need for high-physics fulfillment is "strange." But presto-chango, Claire too dumps her couch-potato guy and comes to live with Julie. And, viva la liberation, life becomes a pajama party for the Jersey women. Showing the extent of their bonding, Julie also arm-twists Claire into trotting along with her to her evening classes, where fellow high school dropout Claire inures herself by disregarding the lectures on "chaos theory" and other high science. Indeed, Claire is particularly baffled by Julie's craze for knowledge because she remembers her as an indifferent and decidedly noncerebral high school student. Despite Julie's prior nonintellectual life, in which she never demonstrated any special talents, she's suddenly burning up the chalkboard with fancy math, deconstructing algorithms -- or something like that. In her dazzling high-power math performances, she's akin to Rain Man counting matches. Soon, her teacher-mentor (Spalding Gray), a tweedy old male, is talking college to her. How come Julie or no one else detected this "gift" before? Well, it's not so implicitly understood that it's because she has been a victim throughout life, suppressed and oppressed. Now, for the first time, her self-esteem is above ground level. It's in these proud moments, as the young woman beams with accomplishment, that the film rings truest and touches us. We embrace Julie, appreciating that this woman has long been just a service person to everyone else, never complimented or encouraged in anything beyond domestic duties. It's not only her husband who has been her "oppressor," but it's also the whole working-class mind-set of women remaining in their kitchen-ly place. Unfortunately, screenwriters Wendy Hammond and Bob Grosse don't demonstrate the writing skills to blend their more big-bang themes with the everyday world of a Jersey woman. Yelping about "chaos theory" and ramblings about the nature of the universe ring out as alien nonsense in this "I Am Blue-collar Woman" filmic anthem.
Now, just when we're kind of plugged into the escape from the chauvinistic-society themery, the filmmakers heap it on: Julie begins to snuggle up to Claire. Despite some initial reservations from Claire, whose tight, sexy, man-targeting apparel doesn't clue us to any sexual urgings other than the sports-bar male, the two become ardent nuzzlers. Two equations later, they're lovers and having a romp hiding from the kids. Yikes. It's as if the filmmakers didn't have enough story matter or writing skills to complete the liberated-from-drudgery theme, so they orbited out into an alternative sexual universe. At this juncture, my entire row at the Sundance premiere began its descending slump.
Although "Julie" gyrates all over the story universe, it never convinces even on a rudimentary level. Usually, one would have to linger at the Starbucks in Brentwood to pick up a similar slant on blue-collar life such as the one that "Julie" posits. The whole working-class milieu -- not to mention the stereotypical characters, from downtrodden Julie to the across-the-board bozos on the male side -- rings out as a thematic construct rather than real life. Thankfully, Love, as the bimbo-ish waitress and best girlfriend, has enough snap and saucy swagger to get beyond the dimensions of her big-earringed, blowsy-blonde character. Love's performance is about the only thing in this by-the-numbers scrabble that doesn't seem squared to the nth degree from a story equation.
Eventually, "Julie" flutters off into a little-bang puff of drippy visual flourishes and gooey narrative. The half-baked story line is further grounded by director Bob Gosse's gummy aesthetics, most cloyingly the strummy, good-feel musical accompaniment. Visually, it's just as clouded: "Julie" literally ends on a moony shot of the stars just at the point you hope it will begin to reconnect all of its loose ends. Evidently, the filmmakers have their own transcendent version of "chaos theory" as it applies to making sense of everyday life stories.
JULIE JOHNSON
Shooting Gallery
Producers: Ray Angelic, Larry Meistrich
Director: Bob Gosse
Screenwriters: Wendy Hammond, Bob Gosse
Executive producers: Steve Carlis, Donald C. Carter, Keith Abell
Director of photography: David M. Dunlap
Costume designer: Kathryn Nixon
Production designer: Mark Ricker
Executive music producer: Tracy McKnight
Visual effects supervisor: Jonathan Flack
Postproduction supervisor: Chris Kenneally
Supervising sound editor: Jennifer Ralston
Color/Stereo
Julie: Lili Taylor
Claire: : Courtney Love
Mr. Miranda: : Spalding Gray
Rick: : Noah Emmerich
Lisa: Mischa Barton
Frank: Gideon Jacobs
Running time -- 94 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Embroidered with the thickest of blue-collar story apparel, "Julie" centers on a beleaguered, overworked Hoboken wife, Julie (Taylor), who trudges through life, essentially, as a beast of burden. Her old-school hubbie, a cop (Noah Emmerich), is two rungs below Archie Bunker and wants his brewskis on the table with supper at the same time every night. He treats her like the hired help, and it's his condescending wrath that makes Julie hide the science magazines she has bought for years at the grocery store (evidently Hoboken has more sophisticated checkout-line reading matter than, say, Westwood). One typical night, between Beer 1 and Beer 2 at the table, Julie drops her freedom-of-expression mandate on hubby: She wants to go back to school to get her GED and then maybe study computers. The kids gulp and hubbie roars, and Julie scampers back to the kitchen.
Julie is plucky, however, and soon announces that she's going to school with or without his permission. Not surprisingly, her hirsute mate objects, and she throws him out, much to the shock of her two teen and preteen kids (Gideon Jacobs and Mischa Barton). Has this physics thing warped her mind, or is it just an excuse to get rid of The Old Man? We're never completely sure, owing to the surface transparency of the writing, but we gather that Julie, unlike Edith Bunker, is just sick and tired of being "stifled," regarded merely as a beer- and sex-dispensing machine.
Even her best friend, Claire, believes Julie's sudden need for high-physics fulfillment is "strange." But presto-chango, Claire too dumps her couch-potato guy and comes to live with Julie. And, viva la liberation, life becomes a pajama party for the Jersey women. Showing the extent of their bonding, Julie also arm-twists Claire into trotting along with her to her evening classes, where fellow high school dropout Claire inures herself by disregarding the lectures on "chaos theory" and other high science. Indeed, Claire is particularly baffled by Julie's craze for knowledge because she remembers her as an indifferent and decidedly noncerebral high school student. Despite Julie's prior nonintellectual life, in which she never demonstrated any special talents, she's suddenly burning up the chalkboard with fancy math, deconstructing algorithms -- or something like that. In her dazzling high-power math performances, she's akin to Rain Man counting matches. Soon, her teacher-mentor (Spalding Gray), a tweedy old male, is talking college to her. How come Julie or no one else detected this "gift" before? Well, it's not so implicitly understood that it's because she has been a victim throughout life, suppressed and oppressed. Now, for the first time, her self-esteem is above ground level. It's in these proud moments, as the young woman beams with accomplishment, that the film rings truest and touches us. We embrace Julie, appreciating that this woman has long been just a service person to everyone else, never complimented or encouraged in anything beyond domestic duties. It's not only her husband who has been her "oppressor," but it's also the whole working-class mind-set of women remaining in their kitchen-ly place. Unfortunately, screenwriters Wendy Hammond and Bob Grosse don't demonstrate the writing skills to blend their more big-bang themes with the everyday world of a Jersey woman. Yelping about "chaos theory" and ramblings about the nature of the universe ring out as alien nonsense in this "I Am Blue-collar Woman" filmic anthem.
Now, just when we're kind of plugged into the escape from the chauvinistic-society themery, the filmmakers heap it on: Julie begins to snuggle up to Claire. Despite some initial reservations from Claire, whose tight, sexy, man-targeting apparel doesn't clue us to any sexual urgings other than the sports-bar male, the two become ardent nuzzlers. Two equations later, they're lovers and having a romp hiding from the kids. Yikes. It's as if the filmmakers didn't have enough story matter or writing skills to complete the liberated-from-drudgery theme, so they orbited out into an alternative sexual universe. At this juncture, my entire row at the Sundance premiere began its descending slump.
Although "Julie" gyrates all over the story universe, it never convinces even on a rudimentary level. Usually, one would have to linger at the Starbucks in Brentwood to pick up a similar slant on blue-collar life such as the one that "Julie" posits. The whole working-class milieu -- not to mention the stereotypical characters, from downtrodden Julie to the across-the-board bozos on the male side -- rings out as a thematic construct rather than real life. Thankfully, Love, as the bimbo-ish waitress and best girlfriend, has enough snap and saucy swagger to get beyond the dimensions of her big-earringed, blowsy-blonde character. Love's performance is about the only thing in this by-the-numbers scrabble that doesn't seem squared to the nth degree from a story equation.
Eventually, "Julie" flutters off into a little-bang puff of drippy visual flourishes and gooey narrative. The half-baked story line is further grounded by director Bob Gosse's gummy aesthetics, most cloyingly the strummy, good-feel musical accompaniment. Visually, it's just as clouded: "Julie" literally ends on a moony shot of the stars just at the point you hope it will begin to reconnect all of its loose ends. Evidently, the filmmakers have their own transcendent version of "chaos theory" as it applies to making sense of everyday life stories.
JULIE JOHNSON
Shooting Gallery
Producers: Ray Angelic, Larry Meistrich
Director: Bob Gosse
Screenwriters: Wendy Hammond, Bob Gosse
Executive producers: Steve Carlis, Donald C. Carter, Keith Abell
Director of photography: David M. Dunlap
Costume designer: Kathryn Nixon
Production designer: Mark Ricker
Executive music producer: Tracy McKnight
Visual effects supervisor: Jonathan Flack
Postproduction supervisor: Chris Kenneally
Supervising sound editor: Jennifer Ralston
Color/Stereo
Julie: Lili Taylor
Claire: : Courtney Love
Mr. Miranda: : Spalding Gray
Rick: : Noah Emmerich
Lisa: Mischa Barton
Frank: Gideon Jacobs
Running time -- 94 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 1/29/2001
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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