WIREY SPINDELL
Reviewed by Harvey Karten WinStar Cinema Director: Eric Schaeffer Writer: Eric Schaeffer Cast: Eric Mabius, Eric Schaeffer, Callie Thorne, Bill Weeden, Devin Matthews-Johnson, Zane Adlum, Samantha Buck
Woody Allen transformed nerdiness into art while Eric Schaeffer tries to follow that path with "Wirey Spindell," a semiautobiographical look at his current screwed-up personality with peeks at the 36-year-old man during various earlier stages of his life. The result is a strange movie, mixing vulgar, Kevin-Smith type comedy with a disheartening view of the title character--a blend that does not come off but at times demonstrates Schaeffer's inclination to locate key incidents in his life that made him the person he is. The film is based on his ten-year-old unpublished novel, though Schaeffer in effect produces the book by providing so much narration in the movie that you wonder if Schaeffer really wants to cram the novel down your throat by way of the screen. Still somehow the narration does not come off as intrusive as you'd expect if you were annoyed with the perpetual philosophisizing on the sound track of Terrence Malick's "The Thin Red Line."
The picture gets off to an awful start, one that could encourage people to walk out on what promises to be a prelude to a sophomoric story. Wirey (Eric Schaeffer) sits fully clothed in the bathroom while his fiancee, Tabatha (Callie Thorne) opens the door in time to hear Wirey complain that she is invading his space during his private time. But Wirey does not simply explain this point to his girl friend but illuminates it such a nebbishy way that Woody Allen could be considered Laurence Olivier next to him. Things can only get better after that.
The basic conflict examined by the movie is Wirey Spindell's inability to sit next to his fiance without having his eyes wander around the room, scrutinizing just about anyone in a skirt and presumably fantasying about what it's like to be intimate with her. This is not all that drives Tabatha crazy: for the past nine months, Wirey has been unable to perform in bed with her. Exploring his background as though under analysis by a Freudian therapist with an earthy sense of humor, Wirey ultimately discovers the cause of his neuroses, an origin that is all too farfetched and which, having been discovered, can hardly cure him of his malady in time for his upcoming, and probably short-lived, marriage.
Spindell takes us to seminal incidents of his past, starting with his first memory of being blown across the room while licking an electrical outlet to his battle with addiction to drugs and alcohol (his father was a hippie), through his experiences with several women in junior high, high school and college. Unpopular with his male peers, he has mixed success with women culminating in a heartbreaking fling with the sexy Samantha (Samantha Buck).
Much of what Schaeffer shows us has been done in other films with more resonance, poignancy and humor. The wacky therapy sessions (his stepmother's former lesbian lover as the analyst); affiliations with some wacked-out coke- heads and with leggy and pliant females; the sorrowful contacts with a mother and estranged father who demand obedience but haven't a clue how to express their love to the young man.
There isn't a single likable character in the film, from the high-school teacher in Vermont who makes fun of the New Yorker on his very first day to the uninspiring fiance who calls her boyfriend honey and sweetie at least a decade before such endearing terms should ever be used. For the most part Mr. Schaeffer, by mixing melodrama and comedy in ways that they do not combine, neither shows how Wirey's early life is so terrible that he winds up a drugged and drunken misfit nor jogs the comedy to a level beyond the mildly amusing.
Rated R. Running Time: 95 minutes. (C) 2000 Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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