Hurlyburly" (1998) 1/2 star out of 4. Starring Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn, Kevin Spacey, Garry Shandling, Chazz Palminteri, Meg Ryan and Anna Paquin.
I was taught if you can't say anything nice about something, keep your mouth shut.
But that would be doing a disservice to anyone who is thinking of seeing this sorry excuse for a motion picture.
On stage, David Rabe's play may be fascinating, but as a film "Hurlyburly" is an excruiating two hours of self-absorbed narcissists doing nothing but whining, crying, cursing and babbling about life, drugs, sex, money and friendship.
It's all pretentious nonsense as these Hollywood losers snort cocaine, drink, screw and continually blab about nothing. This movie makes an episode of "Seinfeld" look like Chekov.
Even though it is fascinating watching Sean Penn seem to self-destruct, his brave performance (which he had done earlier on stage) cannot save this tiresome tirade of banalities.
Never has such a fine cast, which includes Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright Penn, Chazz Palminteri, Garry Shandling and Anna Paquin, been forced to try to do so much with so little.
Even the stunt casting of Meg Ryan as a hooker cannot keep this leaden vehicle afloat.
Some will say that I'm a cretin because David Rabe is one of our finest playwrights. Perhaps. But if being a cretin means applauding "Hurlyburly," then just consider me an uneducated lout who cannot appreciate high art.
Just remember, though, I told you so.
Bob Bloom is the film critic at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He can be reached by e-mail at bloom@journal-courier.com or cbloom@iquest.net
cb
Carol Bloom of Bloom Ink Publishing Professionals 3312 Indian Rock Lane West Lafayette, IN 47906-1203 765-497-9320 fax 765-497-3112 cbloom@iquest.net
Committed to Lifelong Learning through Effective Communication
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