(spoilers)
Poor guy-he's having a bad day, on New Year's Eve, no less. But that's typical karma for Jimmy Zoole (Steve Guttenberg). Come to think of it, he had a pretty bad year, too, even by bad-aspiring-actor/writer standards. Yes, life has kicked him hard and repeatedly in his not-so-golden globes. Trust me, if the highlight of your year is a one-man show of Hamlet with puppets, you're in need of some serious help.
Guttenberg tells us all this in the opening voice-over, piquing both our interest and our sympathy. Well, WHAT ELSE can go wrong? we wonder. Plenty. His best friend died a while back and his girlfriend Kate (Cynthia Watros) is leaving him, moving out and spending New Year's Eve with new beau Fred (Tom Wright) instead. Ouch! And that's just the start of Jimmy's misery. Did I mention he's being evicted? All he wants to do is go home, make a TV dinner and go to bed. Uh uh. Before we're done, his cat dying will seem like GOOD NEWS, relatively speaking.
Kate walks in on a burglary, the third to hit Jimmy in recent months (yep, same guy each time). Eddie the thief (Lombardo Boyar) astutely hides in the closet while Kate leaves a Dear John letter (with that bummer of a P.S.). Then Jimmy comes home and they get into a fight about his Aunt Claire (Shirley Knight), his liking to be alone and a couple dozen other things.
So Kate leaves. Then Jimmy finds Eddie hiding under the bed and just plain loses it-he ties up Eddie (he's so pathetic, he doesn't even have rope and duct tape to do it properly). Then he steps out to put in an obligatory appearance at his aunt's party. She gives him his monthly support check but balks at providing front money for any more writing projects (good move, I say).
Number one on Jimmy's angst list is the fact that Eddie previously stole the novel he wrote. To make up for that, when he gets back, he proceeds to interview the guy (I told you he wasn't thinking straight). Eventually, they arrive at a sort of camaraderie, kind of a male Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. He comes to regret inviting over Crazy Carmine (A.J. Benza) and a couple of his pals. I'm not gonna say what THEIR idea of "fun" is, but it makes Jimmy's previous tales of woe pale by comparison.
Watros is ideal as the kind, misunderstood, yet subject to random rants and raves girlfriend. Alas, she's onscreen less here than in an episode of Titus; but considering what goes down in that apartment, perhaps that's for the best.
Guttenberg utilizes a nice, slow pacing throughout, the soothing jazz and opera strains playing a nice counterpoint to the building tension. I was left wishing the relationship between Jimmy and Eddie, two opposites that somehow attract, had been explored further. Maybe in a sequel-P.P.S. Your Girlfriend's Still Gone, perhaps. The confinedness and isolation of the apartment are palpable and reminiscent of Rear Window. In this sordid downward spiral of a tale, Guttenberg definitely puts the noir in film noir.
Poor guy-he's having a bad day, on New Year's Eve, no less. But that's typical karma for Jimmy Zoole (Steve Guttenberg). Come to think of it, he had a pretty bad year, too, even by bad-aspiring-actor/writer standards. Yes, life has kicked him hard and repeatedly in his not-so-golden globes. Trust me, if the highlight of your year is a one-man show of Hamlet with puppets, you're in need of some serious help.
Guttenberg tells us all this in the opening voice-over, piquing both our interest and our sympathy. Well, WHAT ELSE can go wrong? we wonder. Plenty. His best friend died a while back and his girlfriend Kate (Cynthia Watros) is leaving him, moving out and spending New Year's Eve with new beau Fred (Tom Wright) instead. Ouch! And that's just the start of Jimmy's misery. Did I mention he's being evicted? All he wants to do is go home, make a TV dinner and go to bed. Uh uh. Before we're done, his cat dying will seem like GOOD NEWS, relatively speaking.
Kate walks in on a burglary, the third to hit Jimmy in recent months (yep, same guy each time). Eddie the thief (Lombardo Boyar) astutely hides in the closet while Kate leaves a Dear John letter (with that bummer of a P.S.). Then Jimmy comes home and they get into a fight about his Aunt Claire (Shirley Knight), his liking to be alone and a couple dozen other things.
So Kate leaves. Then Jimmy finds Eddie hiding under the bed and just plain loses it-he ties up Eddie (he's so pathetic, he doesn't even have rope and duct tape to do it properly). Then he steps out to put in an obligatory appearance at his aunt's party. She gives him his monthly support check but balks at providing front money for any more writing projects (good move, I say).
Number one on Jimmy's angst list is the fact that Eddie previously stole the novel he wrote. To make up for that, when he gets back, he proceeds to interview the guy (I told you he wasn't thinking straight). Eventually, they arrive at a sort of camaraderie, kind of a male Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. He comes to regret inviting over Crazy Carmine (A.J. Benza) and a couple of his pals. I'm not gonna say what THEIR idea of "fun" is, but it makes Jimmy's previous tales of woe pale by comparison.
Watros is ideal as the kind, misunderstood, yet subject to random rants and raves girlfriend. Alas, she's onscreen less here than in an episode of Titus; but considering what goes down in that apartment, perhaps that's for the best.
Guttenberg utilizes a nice, slow pacing throughout, the soothing jazz and opera strains playing a nice counterpoint to the building tension. I was left wishing the relationship between Jimmy and Eddie, two opposites that somehow attract, had been explored further. Maybe in a sequel-P.P.S. Your Girlfriend's Still Gone, perhaps. The confinedness and isolation of the apartment are palpable and reminiscent of Rear Window. In this sordid downward spiral of a tale, Guttenberg definitely puts the noir in film noir.