COMMITTED (Miramax) Starring: Heather Graham, Casey Affleck, Luke Wilson, Goran Visnjic, Patricia Velasquez, Alfonso Arau. Screenplay: Lisa Krueger. Producers: Dean Silvers and Marlen Hecht. Director: Lisa Krueger. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 98 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Heather Graham is a lovely woman. Now that we have dispensed with the obvious, can we ponder for a moment the mystery of why she continues to pull down roles in films with edge and attitude, since she appears to have little of either? TWO GIRLS AND A GUY, BOOGIE NIGHTS, BOWFINGER -- in each she was competent, but primarily served the function of being a lovely woman. And in AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME, even competence eluded her. I can only guess that Graham gives killer auditions. On screen, she melts into the art direction whenever she's not serving the function of well, you get the picture.
Lisa Krueger's COMMITTED is a goofy, quirky sort-of romantic comedy that offers some pleasant character-based amusement. The fact that it's not more is only partly Graham's fault. She plays Joline, a New York nightclub booking agent who has decided that her word will always be her bond in life. That goes double for her marriage to Carl (Luke Wilson), which she values above everything else (to the point that she has had a wedding band tattooed to her finger). She is understandably distraught, therefore, when Carl decides he needs some space, and flees for parts unknown. But Joline takes nothing so seriously as "till death do you part," and so sets out on a road trip to find Carl. Eventually she tracks him down in El Paso, where he may not be terribly pleased about being tracked down.
For a little while, I thought Krueger was on her way to making COMMITTED a sly commentary on children of divorce coping with their own commitment issues. We learn that Joline's own parents split, perhaps inspiring Joline to the equivalent of a child of an alcoholic's proselytizing teetotaling (as it may have inspired her brother Jay, played by Casey Affleck, to a somewhat creepy attachment to Joline). Krueger may even have intended the film as a commentary on the way society looks at people with passionate commitments. There's something intriguing about the way it is assumed someone who will fight to the end for a marriage must be a bit nuts, just as it is assumed fervent believers in anything must be a bit nuts.
Actually, COMMITTED only teases with subtext, since it's not much of a commentary on anything. That doesn't mean it's not entertaining in a sporadic, out-of-left-field sort of way. Whenever COMMITTED seems to have been lurching along far too long in search of a good scene, it finds one that delivers unexpected laughs (Patricia Velasquez as an utterly indifferent restaurant waitress; Alfonso Arau in a too-rare screen appearance as a kindly Mexican medicine man). It even delivers unexpected romantic heat on occasion, in moments between Graham and Goran Visnjic as Carl's El Paso neighbor Neil. Neil's full-aura massage of Joline is one of the sexiest screen scenes ever in which no one lays a body part on anyone else.
I wish it all felt like it added up to more, but there's a huge hole at the center of COMMITTED. To be fair, Graham does some nice things with the ever-earnest Joline that prevent her from turning into a joke. Unfortunately, she appears to spend all her acting energy on the work of yanking Joline from the jaws of caricature. COMMITTED is one of those films in which the things going on around the main character end up far more interesting than anything happening to the main character herself. Perhaps that's the way Krueger wrote it, retreating to the same isn't-this-all-terribly-indie mannerisms that shackled Krueger's previous effort MANNY & LO. Or perhaps everything around Joline just seems more interesting because Graham doesn't have the presence to command the narrative's focus. I kept wanting to see more edge in Joline's connubial stalking, and realizing there was no way I'd ever get it. In a sporadically funny film, Heather Graham tries to turn from lovely woman into a leading lady, only to fade into the art direction once again.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 commitment issues: 6.
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