Christopher Durang's off-Broadway play BEYOND THERAPY was a triumph, and Durang himself worked with director Robert Altman to bring it to the screen. The result is a truly remarkable film--beautifully played by a first-rate cast, quick paced, provocative, romantic, and very, very funny.
Unlike some Altman films, BEYOND THERAPY offers a traditional storyline. When Prudence and Bruce (Julie Hagerty and Jeff Goldblum) meet for a blind date the result is disasterous--not surprising, when Bruce casually notes that he is bisexual and living with lover Bob (Christopher Guest.) Prudence and Bruce rush back to their therapists (Tom Conti and Glenda Jackson, respectively) for advice... but their therapists are nuttier than they are, and soon they, Bob, Bob's mother Zizi (Genevieve Page), and the entire waitstaff of a French restaurant are dragged into the fray.
Durang's adaptation of his script is absolutely hilarious, and so many memorable lines ("My mother is NOT a transvestite!") bounce through the film that the effect--particularly when coupled with Altman's "wall of sound" audio style--is absolutely dizzying; the sound design is also memorable for the constant car crashes and china shattering that occurs in the background, a metaphor for collision of characters happening before our eyes. The entire cast is absolutely first rate (Hagerty, Goldblum, and Guest have never been better), and Altman guides them with a very sure hand.
Altman's vision always divides viewers: you either like his films or you do not. Although BEYOND THERAPY offers a relatively small cast in a cohesive story, it is actually one of Altman's most visually and aurally kaliediscopic films, and it is unlikely to convert those who find his style confusing and frustrating. But that said, this is a must-have film for any Altman fan, a truly enjoyable romantic comedy with a razor sharp script and a joyous style. A great shame that this VHS is out of print and there is no DVD release! Strongly, strongly recommended.
Not funny
I bought this movie because it was (somewhat) by Christopher Durang, and it is positively the very last time I'll buy a DVD without renting and seeing it first. I liked "Sister Mary..." (the script, I know there's a film out there somewhere with Dianne Keaton in it, ALL of it written by Durang, but alas it is not on DVD, I very much want to see it). But "Beyond Therapy." One good thing I can say for it is the interesting way the chaos and seemingly disparate actions and characters come together (congeal?) into something coherent. But I only laughed twice. Once at the beginning when Prudence drops her magazines and screams a cussword (must be decent, mustn't say the naughty word) at the guy who runs off with them. And once when Bob is lying on the therapist's sofa with a child's fuzzy puppet on his right hand and starts to cry and takes a Kleenex with the hand with the puppet on it. Other than that the most I can say is that it was interesting, hardly funny, NOT Durang that I remember (I've read the play), and the color of the film was kind of dark and blackish, like it had been dipped in soot. I do not recommend this flick to anyone. However. A lot of people liked it, so I guess it's a question of taste.
Beneath Contempt
I don't think I've seen a worse screen version of a stage play than this one.
Christopher Durang and Robert Altman have very different styles and senses of humor, which come together in this movie like the Titanic and the iceberg, sinking the whole enterprise. Durang is direct and over the top; his characters constantly surprise us with their emotional zigzags and unpredictable comments. Altman likes his actors underplaying much of the time while offscreen chattering and noises distract viewers from the dialogue. Jokes, motives, and plot points all get lost in the buzz.
Some of the actors are so badly miscast that no one's direction could have helped. Jeff Goldblum is more creepy, obnoxious, and arrogant than neurotic. And what's with Tom Conti's outrageous accent? He doesn't normally talk like that, and the character isn't written like that.
The play is episodic enough that it should translate well to the screen. I can only hope that some director whose style is more compatible with Durang's will film it again.
"The cinema," Orson Welles famously noted, "is a ribbon of dream." 3 Women is one of few feature films on record as having taken form in a dream. The dreamer was Robert Altman, and although all his best work has an oneiric quality--the floaty zooms, the eerie pastels bleeding into one another, the slip and slide of characters' trajectories overlapping in the fluid accumulation of what passes for narrative--this last masterpiece in his amazing seven-year run of 1970s masterpieces is only more so. Shelly Duvall, that most unorthodox of Altman creatures, locks in the tone with her eerie portrayal of Millie Lammoreaux, a Texan hoyden whose nonstop prattle turns life into a stream-of-consciousness reverie even as most of the people in her vicinity studiously ignore her. Her... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Shelley Duvall - Sissy Spacek Director(s): Robert Altman DVD Release Date: Released the 20 April 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vanessa Redgrave - David Hemmings Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust is by consensus the great Hollywood novel, a poison-pen letter aimed squarely at the tinsel heart of the movie biz. Only in the 1970s could Hollywood actually hazard a film of this story, and the result is suitably corrosive. William Atherton is the observer Tod, Karen Black the blond starlet Faye, and Donald Sutherland the hulking Homer--but they are easily out-acted by the colorful supporting cast. In particular, Burgess Meredith's exhausted showbizzy salesman and Billy Barty's strutting dwarf are superbly crafted gargoyles in this Hollywood wax museum. Director John Schlesinger piles on the rancid atmosphere and rampant hypocrisy until the movie fairly drowns in its own grotesque vision. Long before the climactic apocalyptic riot, the film... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Donald Sutherland - Karen Black Director(s): John Schlesinger DVD Release Date: Released the 08 June 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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One of the most famous productions of its time, Francis Coppola's One from the Heart is a "little movie" that grew into a gigantic, studio-bankrupting behemoth. Entirely shot on glorious sets in Coppola's Zoetrope studio, the teeny story follows a bickering Las Vegas couple (Teri Garr and Frederic Forrest) during a night's madness with others. It would be nice to recommend the film to romantics, or movie-musical mavens, but really this film is for the technologically minded: it's a flashy display of camera trickery and painted sets (anticipating Moulin Rouge). Alas, the techno-dazzle is somewhat at odds with the clunky performances and choppy editorial flow... and it has all the warmth of neon. Since its initial botched release, the film has developed a small but devoted... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Frederic Forrest - Teri Garr - Raul Julia - Nastassja Kinski Director(s): Francis Ford Coppola DVD Release Date: Released the 27 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The first perceptions one has of a work of art likely set one's standard by which that work is subsequently judged in comparison with its presentation in another medium. For example if the work is first encountered as a stage-play, then that form becomes the defacto standard for later comparisons, and a subsequent film of that work will likely never achieve one's preconceived expectations. This reviewer first encountered "Fool for Love" in a local theatre in 1985, never having seen the original play.
Readers who are fans of Tennessee Williams' PBS/Showtime 1984 TV version of "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof" with Jessica Lange and Tommy Lee Jones (forget the worthless and sickeningly bowdlerized 1958 Taylor-Newman version, a perfect example of how rampant, uncontrolled religious censorship runs... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sam Shepard - Kim Basinger Director(s): Robert Altman DVD Release Date: Released the 20 April 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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