Sour Grapes (Reviewed on Dec. 15/98)
Starring Stephen Weber, Craig Bierko
"Sour Grapes", newly released on video, is Larry David's directorial debut. Larry David, for those of you not in the know, is the co-creator of Seinfeld and also the man responsible for writing many of the most classic episodes of that sitcom, including the infamous "Contest" episode. Knowing that, one would expect that "Sour Grapes" would reach new heights in hilarity. Well, this does not exactly happen, but it is one of the funnier movies of the year.
The film stars Stephen Weber (from Wings) and Craig Bierko as cousins; one is a doctor, the other is a designer of running shoes. Along with their respective girlfriends, they spontaneously decide to head to Atlantic City for a night of gambling and quote hotel sex. Needless to say, they both find themselves broke quite quickly. Just before giving up, they decide to spend their last few quarters on the slots. At the machines, their luck is equally bad, until one of them hits the big jackpot and wins 400 thousand dollars. There's only one problem. He won with two quarters the other lent him. The rest of the film has the two cousins fighting over the money, with often wacky, sitcom-like results.
I hope my cynical tone doesn't give you the impression that I disliked the film. Quite the opposite, actually. While not consistently funny, it's never boring. The films strong suit is it's actors, particularly Stephen Weber and Craig Bierko as the fuedin' cousins. They're so gleefully over-the-top, you can't help but laugh at their nutty antics. Weber, in particular, was a surprise. After hitting it big with Wings, he didn't really seem to do anything. "Sour Grapes" essentially returns him to his area of expertise, sitcoms. The movie plays like an overlong pilot for a sitcom. Don't get me wrong, that's not a bad thing. Especially when someone as talented as Larry David is involved.
As a person who was quite dismayed when Seinfeld went off the air earlier this year, I had quite high expectations for this movie. Seinfeld has been the only sitcom that has ever made me laugh as consistently as it did, and most of the funniest episodes were in fact written by David. And seeing as though David is credited as the sole writer for Sour Grapes, one would expect that the joke to laugh ratio would be quite high. While there are several moments I found myself laughing outloud, there are too many instances in which the plot gets in the way. David keeps throwing in more and more ludicrious hoops for his characters to jump through, and I got a little tired of it after a while. I would have liked it if he could have done what made his show so famous, and made the movie mostly about "nothing". David's strong suit is his dialogue, so he should have included more dialogue-driven scenes, and less gimmicky plot devices.
Those familiar with David's work on Seinfeld will likely have a good time spotting the similarities between the two. For one thing, David includes classical music into a number of scenes, including the very same piece that was heard in Seinfeld's "Barber" episode. Also, a prominent character in the film is Beirko's domineering, exaggeratingly Jewish mother, which is very similiar to George's mother on Seinfeld.
"Sour Grapes" may not be the funniest movie of the year, that honor goes to the vastly underrated "BASEketball", but it's always entertaining, and in the end, isn't that really all that matters?
*** out of ****
-- David Nusair dnusair@chat.carleton.ca
We only want to save the cute animals, don't we? Why don't we just have animal auditions, line them up, one by one: "What are you?" "You're free to go." "I'm an otter." "And what are you?" "And what do you do?" "I'm a cow." "I swim around on my back and do cute "Get in the fuckin' truck, pal." little human things with my hands!" -Denis Leary
Come visit my Reel Film Reviews site! "http://chat.carleton.ca/~dnusair"
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