COMMITTED
Reviewed by Harvey Karten Miramax Films Director: Lisa Krueger Writer: Lisa Krueger Cast: Heather Graham, Casey Affleck, Luke Wilson, Goran Visnjic, Patricia Velazquez, Alfonso Arau, Mark Ruffalo, Kim Dickens, Clea DuVall, Jon Stewart, Art Alexakis
Before divorce became so easy to obtain in most states, Americans who needed to split faster than they could do so by the Reno route could go to Mexico. The typical path took the unhappy marrieds first to El Paso, Texas, where they spent the night at a hotel (the women often propositioned by the bellmen), while they crossed a bridge into Ciudad Juarez in the morning to meet their lawyers and spend a few minutes in court. Nowadays, of course, legal splits are so effortless that some young people enter marriage never expecting a true commitment since, after all, are anyone's parents still together? You could not be blamed for wondering when the ritual will change, with reverends intoning, "...until divorce do you part."
Writer-director Lisa Krueger takes a contrarian view of marriage vows with "Committed," breaking with the traditional notion of El Paso as the conventional location of the penultimate day of a marriage. Krueger's 1996 debut with "Manny and Lo" was about a pair of orphaned sisters who take to the road in an old station wagon and sleep in model homes, a fresh and warm comedy. Krueger is still as sympathetic and understanding of her characters, but there is little freshness in this small, sluggish tale. A date movie targeted to twenty-somethings who are contemplating matrimony, "Committed" serves principally as a showcase for the talent of Heather Graham, who, after her larger-than-life role in "Austin Powers II" may have looked for a chance to strut her stuff in a more modest story. =
"Committed," which would fit better on a small screen, perhaps on a cable network, focuses on Graham in virtually every scene as the young bride, Joline, who is compulsive enough to believe in her vow to "love, honor and protect" her man. So addicted is she to fidelity--or more accurately to being a woman of her word--that when her flustered and foggy- minded photographer husband Carl (Luke Wilson) bolts to the Texas sticks after 587 days of marriage, she is determined to locate him, to observe his actions, to protect him from harm, and to bring him back to his senses. Equipped with just a trace of a sorcerer's enchantment, she simply tosses his picture on a map of the U.S. and, bingo, there he is in El Paso, hiding out in a shack just short of the Mexican border. =
Having "jumped off a cliff," as Joline puts her experience, she is introduced to adventures that are not promised in even the most hyped-up travel agency brochures. Despite her vows she comes close to pursuing an affair with the charismatic Neil (Goran Visnjic), who makes pinatas for sale in neighborhood trade fairs. She also befriends Carmen (Patricia Velazquez), a Mexican with a love for anything American.
We surely need regular doses of correctives for blockbuster films like "Armageddon," but "Committed" is so soporific that even the hardiest of Sundance fans might scream for another showing of "Rules of Engagement" or "U-571." Casey Affleck as Joline's phlegmatic brother--a young man who unlike his sister seems to have no boundaries or desires to commit to anyone or anything--is meant to be an appealing, laid-back personality, but comes across instead as a guy who at best some 23-year-old women might want to mother. In a moderately engaging cameo, Alfonso Arau--who directed "Like Water for Chocolate" and "A Walk in the Clouds"-- performs in the role of a snake-handler with magic powers. =
But if you're going to throw in some magic realism as Arau did in "Chocolate," you'd best take your cameras to a town like Sedona, AZ. Still, not even that burg's red rocks could bring enchantment to this absolutely ordinary piece.
Rated R. Running time: 98 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
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