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davidjgoldberg
Reviews
Full Grown Men (2006)
Full Grown Dud
I sat through a screening of this move at the Tribeca Film Festival for two reasons: Amy Sedaris and Judah Friedlander. Sedaris, sadly, has only one scene to steal. She succeeds. Friedlander, on the other hand, has a leading role and gives a fine performance, but my serious qualms with the story and other characters prevented me from really enjoying it.
Full Grown Men tells the story of Alby Cutrera, a man who somehow married, fathered a son, and reached his thirties without giving up the posturing, tastes, and accouterments of a ten-year-old. How Alby provides for his family, or what exactly his wife saw in him before she kicks him out in the opening scene is never dealt with. What we do know is that Alby is entirely unlikable. His vexatious antics drive the story as he flees his family and coerces his boyhood buddy, Elias (Friedlander), into taking him to Diggityland, the Wallyworld of Florida. We soon learn that Alby was bossy and cruel to Elias when they were children, and his pre-adolescent ribbing continues as they attempt to get acquainted as adults. Elias finally grows tired of the childishness (though not soon enough for me), and Alby finds himself hitchhiking through Florida in one of the most strained, toilsome road movies I've ever seen. Throughout this pointless journey he meets a string of wacky characters (of which Sedaris is one) who are obliged by cliché to push him a few minutes closer to the end of the movie. Eventually, he gets a greatly deserved butt-kicking by a group of midgets (one of the many feeble attempts at getting a laugh), and he still doesn't get the point: nobody likes you, Alby, you need to grow up. In the end we know he's been transformed because he draws a life-like sketch of a handicapped child instead of doodling one of his refrigerator-art comics about how he longs to be a kid again. Then in the final shot, riding a bus home to his family, Alby gives us one last asinine grin before blowing a great, big bubble, presumably from his pouch of big league chew. Oh, Alby, will you ever be a full grown man? Who cares?
Art School Confidential (2006)
Foolish dreamer wants to be Picasso, falls in love with stranger, then has wishes granted in a wholly unbelievable turn of events.
Art School Confidential is a simply terrible movie built from a script that needed dozens of rewrites before it would've been coherent. How Clowes went from creating such a lovely screenplay as Ghostworld to churning out this desperate schlock is beyond me, but it's clear that something went terribly wrong in this, his second collaboration with director Terry Zwigoff. It's apparent that they needed to rag on art, understandably, but the two must have been very hard pressed for a project to attempt this. Watching it, I was embarrassed for them.
The cast is wasted. Angelica Huston, far and away the most talented actress in the film, is in all of two scenes. Why is she even in this movie? Malkovich's performance as Professor Sandiford is entertaining enough, but the character is totally inconsistent. The main character, Jerome, played by Max Minghella, is hopelessly naive and unlikable. Minghella tries his hardest, but I wanted more to see Jerome get slapped than to see him succeed. After ogling love interest, Sophia Myles, from across the room and then briefly meeting her, Jerome starts calling her his girlfriend. Huh? Where did this kid come from? There are myriad unbelievable, sometimes cliché developments like this which only confuse the viewer.
What is the intent? Did they set out to make a dark comedy, a farce, or what? The prat-falls and attempts at slap-stick negate any value it might have had as commentary on the art world. The plot is labored and full of holes, the comedy is lame at best, and the so-called "twist" at the end is a cheap trick which bundles up dozens of loose, frayed ends.
Not since Crash has a movie so enraged me.