Review: Two Girls And A Guy
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Heather Graham, Natasha Gregson Wagner
Directed by James Toback
Approx Running Time: 90 min
Two Girls And A Guy is a perfect example of how a single actor can turn around a script and an entire film. The first 15 minutes of the movie made me nauseous. The dialogue was trite and insipid, the acting below mediocre. Graham and Gregson Wagner open the film awaiting their boyfriend's return from LA. After chatting a bit, they come to realize that they are both involved with the same fellow. They break into his appartment and wait. At one point, I turned to my friend and told her that I planned on leaving if Gregson Wagner's character, Lou, didn't shut up.
Enter Robert Downey Jr. From then on, the film took a dynamic and thuroughly entertaining turn. The acting by Graham and Gregson Wagner improved and the screenwriting became fresh. Each character develops more and more deeply as the film progresses.
The entire story takes place inside the appartment on a single afternoon. Blake, an actor for hire, comes back to what he thinks is his empty appartment in NY one afternoon. After a brilliant turn as an "actor alone in his appartment", Carla (Graham) pops out from behind a doorway to surprise the man she thought she loved. The following exchange is classic. Eventually, Lou comes out and the fireworks begin. I was never sure of the motives of any of the characters, and so I did not have any clue what was going to come of the confrontation. There is no action, there is no suspense, there are no wild characters that appear out of nowhere to distract the viewer. What you get is a unique tale and a marvelous performance by Downey Jr. Enough to make one wonder what he could do if there were no nasal or needle distractions in his life.
The production quality is perhaps the film's biggest flaw. There are countless voice-overs to fill poorly recorded dialogue. (Which is curious since it was all filmed in an appartment.) The volume level of the actors goes up and down and in and out. It almost seems like a sound experiment. Focus is another strange thing in this film. There are numerous focus changes. But they are so minor that I wondered if they were the mark of a bad cinematographer and focus puller or some brilliant artistic element that I just didn't get.
Two Girls And A Guy is a fresh and energetic film that is stylishly told. It may serve as inspiration to prospective screenwriters who wonder if a three character, single location script can be written well. Yes.
*** out of **** stars.
© 1998 Nick Amado Email me with comments, questions, debate welcome. namado@concentric.net
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