THE REAL BLONDE
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Paramount Pictures/Lakeshore Entertainment Director: Tom DiCillo Writer: Tom DiCillo Cast: Matthew Modine, Catherine Keener, Daryl Hannah, Maxwell Caulfield, Elizabeth Berkley, Marlo Thomas, Bridgette Wilson
"The Real Blonde" is a very New York movie, though its principal conceits would make it feel right at home in L.A. A sendup of slickness for its own sake, Tom DiCillo's marvelously realized work sometimes flirts with the very slickness it parodies, but DiCillo--whose previous film "Living in Oblivion" was looser in design and not as ambitious-- remains almost uncompromisingly independent and original. Highlighting a central relationships which is headed for the rocks, "The Real Blonde" hosts a large cast playing hilariously written roles, which are well acted and contribute mightily toward making this a spiny film about the absurdities of artifice and the need for a more natural way of living.
As the plot's center, Joe (Matthew Modine) is a flawed human being living together with a perfectly stable woman, Mary (Catherine Keener), who ironically is undergoing psychotherapy for hostilities which she has every right to possess. After all, how should any woman feel when each day she is verbally attacked by the bum on the street corner and has to cope with a steady who at the age of 35 has little concept of reality? For his part Joe considers himself a serious actor, though he has no credits and no agent, yet does not want to consider roles in soap operas or anything of less artistic merit than "Death of a Salesman." As the movie meanders along, introducing a multiplicity of persons along the way, we realize where the story is headed. Joe and Mary's relationship will either fall apart under the pressures of both the outside society and their inner differences, or they will enjoy a happy reconciliation when Joe has his feet no longer planted firmly in midair.
And oh what an assortment of oddballs and curious situations they encounter during the course of the comedy! DiCillo has a ball taking aim on the popular culture of high fashion, MTV, and soaps, displaying before us a host of people who are all unhappy despite the glamorous positions in which they find themselves. Why should Joe's strikingly handsome, well-spoken friend Bob (Maxwell Caulfield) feel that his life is useless unless he can bed a blonde--a real blonde, that is? And would Doug (Denis Leary), a instructor in self-defense techniques for women, be expected to have contempt for the very clients he is trying to help in their struggle against exploitative men? Some of the best scenes in the film point out ironies like these, and do so with style and grand humor. In one such episode Ernst (Christopher Lloyd--who is best known for his role as a scientist in "Back to the Future") is a grouchy, unsmiling headwaiter in a fancy catering establishment who chews out one of his staff for looking like a zombie. In another, Kelly (Daryl Hannah), quick to threaten suicide in a soap opera she is filming with Bob, acts hardly the vulnerable type in her real life affair with the male star.
The highlight of this well-written script features a confrontation between Joe and the set manager of an MTV routine featuring a Madonna lookalike (Elizabeth Berkley) and a host of beach boys in shorts who are all directed to do a double-take when the international star passes through their ranks. When the African-American man with the bullhorn suggests to two impressionable actors on the set that the Holocaust was a myth, Joe confronts the jerk with a smile on his face, incongruously suggesting that slavery was likewise a fraud: that Africans came to American shores during and after the 17th Century simply because they wanted better jobs working in the cotton fields. He gets fired for his mock views, the writer-director suggesting that speaking your mind is not always in everyone's best interest in a culture that virtually worships anorectic and absurd Versace-type fashion models like one such person, Sahara (Bridgette Wilson), who considers "The Little Mermaid" the ultimate in spiritual moviemaking.
In other vignettes Marlo Thomas comes across in a whimsical manner as a high-profile fashion photographer who, when discovering that her chief model has come in with a black eye, has similar bruises painted on her other models while photographing them with large snakes wrapped about their limbs, rose petals dropping to their laps.
Matthew Modine, perhaps the least sexy young person in this world of artifice, is perfectly cast as a guy who gets a belated start in his career only by dropping his standards but who parlays his work into a serious calling once his foot is in the door. Denis Leary, Daryl Hannah, and Buck Henry help realize the director's vision by showing themselves for what they really are and how they really feel about the people they work with: and what they really are is anything but nice. "The Real Blonde" has a plot line that is not tight enough to give it a widespread market but will appeal immensely to all who can appreciate its sharp, urban humor. Not Rated. Running time: 105 minutes. (C) Harvey Karten 1998
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews