I've been on an Altman kick lately. He was a very interesting filmmaker whose output is split pretty evenly between wonderful successes and crashing-bore failures that are at least interesting in a train wreck kind of way. Very few of his films fall in the middle ground between these two. Unfortunately, "Pret a Porter" (Ready to Wear) is one of those very few. This film has the same inter-cut multi-story structure as the classic "Nashville" and the underrated "A Wedding," but none of the anarchic madness or depth of those earlier films. But it's also not a spectacular "what the hell were they thinking" failure like "Quintet," "Popeye," or "OC & Stiggs." "Pret" falls squarely in the middle ground. And the result is a film that is almost too boring to watch. There's just nothing special here--the story isn't special, the style in which the story is told isn't special, the cinematography is straight and bland, the sense of reality and improvisation is missing, and the signature Altman overlapping dialog is nowhere to be heard. It's like Altman wrote the script and then handed it over to Chris Columbus to direct. Like I said before, I wanted to like it. But there's nothing there that's any better or worse than bland average blah-ness. Middle of the middle ground.
And for Robert Altman--the middle ground equals total failure.
And for Robert Altman--the middle ground equals total failure.