Reviews

How two people meet and end up joining forces. How a cocktail waitress can wreak havoc on a life while presenting herself as a wide-eyed innocent. How an older man, the eye of a hurricane, can face characters who are angry and ready to become violent. How personal history has meaning even if you escape consequences for years. All add up to simple storytelling. The kind that keeps you on the edge of your seat. Where can this go? What happens next? Those questions linger throughout every scene. In the meantime, there are jolts of adrenaline as the viewer is shocked even as the action proceeds at a relatively slow pace. The actors are well-known today. John C. Reilly, Samuel L. Jackson, Philip Baker Hall, Philip Seymour Hoffman; Then there is the director and writer: Paul Thomas Anderson. Makes you wonder why and how Gwyneth Paltrow ever got through this without a middle initial.

If this film played a part in a meal, it would be a palate cleanser. It's simple, it's clean. It's not very filling, It's a break from the fatty stuff, the sweet stuff, and the heavy stuff.

I enjoyed trying to guess where the movie was shot - Oregon, I think. Never been there, don't know what it is like. But the Voodoo Doughnuts were a clue and Portland is mentioned in the dialogue. So, Oregon it could be. Beautiful, different, and looks very nice - for the non-tourist, just someone watching actors in this setting.

The dialogue is relatively uninspired (until the end, when Chris Klein has a nice monologue). The choices of the actors are inspired, though - they play 'normal' people. For once, the female lawyer does not have a sleek suit with a shirt that highlights her cleavage. Clare Coffee plays that lawyer. Her sister is the scientist, one of the central characters. Thora Burch plays that scientist. Burch can easily look like she's 14 years old, but in this film, she simply looks a little weary, a lot cynical, and more likely to frown than smile. For once, a scientist seems more like an average person and not made to look like a lab technician or a woman ready to throw off her jacket and show that she's wearing a bustier around the workplace.

These people look like they have jobs. They dress like they are people who live among other people with jobs and aren't ready to have sex with co-workers on office desks or among the file cabinets. This is not 'Suits.'

I am glad I stayed with the film and watched it to the end, although I lost interest in the 'competition.' The romance is sweet and subdued. But still - oh, so sweet.

I have only watched the first season. So far, yes - the reviews that paint the women in this series as spoiled narcissists (married to or involved with somehow 'successful' loser men) seem to be accurate. There's a place for this on television, though. You need a fantasy trip now and then.

When the main character goes to an important meeting at which she will pitch her new book idea and unload about her personal life at the same time (discussing sex technique in the process), she seems - well, unprofessional. When her friend who is a lawyer and a woman screws a client, she seems - well, unprofessional. When her friend who is an entrepreneur goes to a photo shoot and brings only 3 babies to be photographed and the photographer screeches that you need at least a dozen, the friend seems - well, unprofessional.

But these women are mature and they are so smart, so rich, so self-deluded (as must be the writers of the series), that it doesn't matter! This is life in L.A. among the rich women who seem to have lots of time but no brains. Need substance? Have a regular Shabbat for the bitter married couple who simply can't stand to continue the charade of married life together. That Abby's last name is 'McCarthy' is a real mystery here. I don't know that I want to bother to find out the reason from watching other seasons.

We all need to look at bling and visit spas. We all need to know that somewhere in the hills above the city, there are kids who witness parents yelling at each other and one child asks 'What is divorce?' That child who asked that question is simply no more than a robot, as you will learn as he continues to act in this first season. His mother, the main character (played by Lisa Edelstein) has her own robot chip that takes the place of feeling: at her big meeting, she leaves that kid sitting in a strange hallway, unattended, with his 'imaginary friend.' This imaginary friend is the great friend he has who makes him do bad things - she lacks sense, he lacks sense, hey, who are the people who work on this series who have any sense?

But: we all need to see bling. We all need to watch Lisa Edelstein dance in her underclothes in front of wall-to-ceiling glass windows to give the neighbors a show.The ever-present wine bottle in hand! The house, impressive at first, starts to look like a cheap plastic shoe box when you realize that this family actually HAS neighbors. They have to be there because she has to call them later and they have to hear her voice and come to her aid when she needs to be extricated from a faulty window that she attempts to fix.

Greatest mystery of all in this type of series (there's a series type that it fits): the people who have this great amount of money are also incredibly cheap in surprising ways. Anyone else would simply call someone and pay them to fix the window!

I remember thinking that 'Grace Under Fire' was a very funny show when I saw it on television years ago. Now, amazon prime has it for viewing free to Prime members, so I watched it again.

Today, with streaming and seasons on DVD, it's easy to binge-watch a series (watch all the episodes in chronological order). I did this, and enjoyed 'Grace' almost as much the second-time around. However, there is a tragic subtext to the episodes now. I knew that Brett Butler had some addiction issues but now it is evident how powerfully those problems can change a person's life - no matter what they have, or are given, or do.

Brett Butler is very, very funny. Once the writing comes together and you have watched several episodes, you will want to stick it out for the season and move on to the next. Mid-series, the writing starts to falter, the plots struggle, and Brett's problems in her real life start to intrude. By the end of the series, which was canceled mid-season (season 5), you feel like you are watching a horse about to be put down or sent to the glue factory. She's still got the lines, still makes you smile (sometimes) but she's deteriorating as a performer. She's forcing lines that shouldn't be forced. She's making you think of Judy Garland.

Other actors are jumping ship. The writers are throwing together notecards with key events summarized in one line and thrown away in the dialogue. Brett even has a bad haircut! A cardinal sin for an actress - have I said enough? The only thing missing is weight gain. I would feel sorry for this talented comedienne if it weren't for the waste of her gifts. Such a waste.

Behind all this lurked the producers and writers who suffered while this very good series took a dramatic senseless dive. I have little sympathy for them. There were very big names attached to this project and they failed. Distracted, no doubt, by other shows they were producing that were easier to manage. But this: a perfect example of how anyone can make a show work if you throw enough money at it but real skill is needed when the signs are all there that this is not going to be a walk in the park.

All the actors were fine (even Brett, when she was functioning well). Dave Thomas will always be a gold-star actor in any ensemble, and the same can be said of Tom Poston. Even the saccharine Libby (the character who was Grace's daughter) delivered reliably good performances. What happened to the writers that they wove plot lines into tangled messes and ignored some very strong themes that could have strengthened the show? As the team and the production of 'Grace Under Fire' got increasingly sloppy, the worst happened: Brett Butler became even more the center of every story and every scene. Which, as a person in the throes of addiction, she may have wanted desperately. So she got that - much to the detriment of the series. It ended, mercifully, before she had total meltdown on camera, as producers and writers stood by and watched (expressionless, I would imagine).

I hope to see Brett in a series as funny as this started out to be - someday - with truly talented support behind her. Because she will need it!

The film deserves all ten stars. It has everything. Great acting, good plot, but the themes - oh, my, the themes!

There is friendship and the influences that tug and tear at it. Would the two men who are slacker/criminals stay together and remain the 'bros' they seem to be for life?

There is family and what makes a family. What used to be revered - the role of father - is denied by one man and assumed by two others. No one seems qualified to assume the role, not even the state providing services. But then, that is what every man who becomes a father needs to ask himself: am I good enough for this job?

There is the role of the mother. Being a biological mother with a strong love for her child, a woman fails and fails again. Ultimately, she can't cope with the repeating failure and she removes herself from the family - permanently. How a woman can feel the total responsibility on her weak shoulders is portrayed so accurately in this film, it brings tears. At one point, she asks an interviewer, 'Can you help me?' The shock is: he can't. Or he won't.

There is the role of teacher. Someone who has to go by the rules, even when he may suspect that the rules are going to not play out to the benefit of a child.

Then there is, for me the most important, what makes a stable relationship without sex? My impression was that these two men are not homosexuals and don't become homosexuals. Yet, their bond is strong enough to keep them in the project of a lifetime - raising a child to adulthood. At the very least, you hope that when a man and woman marry, they can get that far - to raise a child to be a young successful independent adult. But often don't! Even same-sex marriage suffer from the same maladies. Two friends? What are the odds that they could?

There is the resilience of the young boy. Does every young person come so well equipped? Why did he turn out to have a future NOT behind bars but with a chance at a real education? Why is the fear that the child with a background stained by tragedy is somehow less equipped to deal with bad influences, whether while growing up or when operating as an adult?

There is so much to think about having seen this movie - that it is almost TOO thought-provoking. It's a feel-good movie AND a downer movie. People are poor. Women suffer in relationships that strain their abilities to cope, and when they and children are abandoned. All too acceptable and 'normal' in today's world. There are no easy answers, not from watching this story unfold.

Yet, it is worth every second of watching!