Julie Delpy may be among the most interesting and talented people connected with Hollywood. Born in Paris and educated in New York, the beautiful actress has also scripted and directed several films ranging from comedies to historical dramas, and even written the music for a few. She's cast her parents in numerous roles. If needed, she would probably delight her cast and crew by running craft services, too.
This offering is a frenetic romantic farce, with Delpy and Chris Rock starring as a couple in Manhattan, coping with her son and his daughter from previous relationships. They manage quite nicely until her family comes from France for a visit. Dad (her actual father, Albert) is a delightfully eccentric old gent; her sister is a royal pain in the derrière. Even worse, she brings her endlessly annoying boyfriend, with whom Delpy had a brief fling years before. The clashes of three generations worth of cultures, personalities and languages are magnified by cramming so many bodies, and all their baggage, into a tiny Manhattan apartment. Chaos reigns.
For about half of the film, the parade of anxieties, resentments and misunderstandings teeters precariously between making us laugh and feel exhausted from sensory overload. There's so much neurotic energy in the air that Rock is the one who seems least crazy! Delpy's creation adds up to a Woody Allen film fueled by crystal meth.
But just before our mental fuses suffer from blown circuits, the plot mellows out with some highly satisfying, and not completely predictable, developments. Delpy rescues her cast and audience from their depicted excesses with wit and heart. This exercise in juggling the two cultural components of her own life is far more hyperbolic than her 2 Days in Paris, in which her American beau was the fish out of water visiting her family on its home turf. One wonders which Delpy found more cathartic? But that's a topic for someone else to explore - perhaps Woody's shrink is available.
This offering is a frenetic romantic farce, with Delpy and Chris Rock starring as a couple in Manhattan, coping with her son and his daughter from previous relationships. They manage quite nicely until her family comes from France for a visit. Dad (her actual father, Albert) is a delightfully eccentric old gent; her sister is a royal pain in the derrière. Even worse, she brings her endlessly annoying boyfriend, with whom Delpy had a brief fling years before. The clashes of three generations worth of cultures, personalities and languages are magnified by cramming so many bodies, and all their baggage, into a tiny Manhattan apartment. Chaos reigns.
For about half of the film, the parade of anxieties, resentments and misunderstandings teeters precariously between making us laugh and feel exhausted from sensory overload. There's so much neurotic energy in the air that Rock is the one who seems least crazy! Delpy's creation adds up to a Woody Allen film fueled by crystal meth.
But just before our mental fuses suffer from blown circuits, the plot mellows out with some highly satisfying, and not completely predictable, developments. Delpy rescues her cast and audience from their depicted excesses with wit and heart. This exercise in juggling the two cultural components of her own life is far more hyperbolic than her 2 Days in Paris, in which her American beau was the fish out of water visiting her family on its home turf. One wonders which Delpy found more cathartic? But that's a topic for someone else to explore - perhaps Woody's shrink is available.