PLAYING MONA LISA
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2000 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
Playing Mona Lisa follows the life of Claire Goldstein (Alicia Witt), who slowly unravels as various forces of nature turn against her. Claire's life is not unlike the movie as a whole, which starts off strong but meanders to a non-ending that is unlikely to leave anyone very satisfied.
Claire is a "brilliant" 23-year old pianist, which is apt casting for Witt, considering she is also a real-life piano prodigy. On the eve of her graduation from the San Francisco Academy of Music, Claire's life starts to come undone. First she doesn't make it into a big piano competition. Then she gets dumped, then evicted, then just plain whiny as she realizes her family (with whom she is now forced to live) is full of freaks.
Subplots galore include messy wedding preparations for sister Jenine (Molly Hagan) and a neurosis for dad (Elliott Gould), but Claire is the centerpiece of the film -- and rightly so. Witt is radiant as an actress, and the few times she's been able to strut her stuff at the movies (see Fun), she's stolen the show. Unfortunately, Mona Lisa's rambling storyline portrays Claire as so incapable of motivation that she is literally paralyzed with inaction, so Witt doesn't have much range to show off.
The bulk of the film becomes a hand-wrenching "How will Claire get by?" when she really just needs to get off her ass and stop bitching. There's nothing overly compelling about her self-made tragedy -- everyone's been dumped once in life -- so it's hard to be overly sympathetic.
Fortunately, Witt is so dazzling she largely overcomes the limitations of her character and makes Playing Mona Lisa (a reference to some advice her friend gives her about creating a healthy state of mind) mostly watchable. It's not great cinema, but it's worth a chuckle or two.
RATING: ***
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Matthew Huffman Producer: Sid Sheinberg, Bill Sheinberg, Jon Sheinberg Writer: Marni Freedman, Carlos De Los Rios Starring: Alicia Witt, Harvey Fierstein, Brooke Langton, Johnny Galecki, Ivan Sergei, Molly Hagan, Elliott Gould, Marlo Thomas, Estelle Harris, Joe Mazza, Tammy Townsend, Sandra Bernhard
No web site. --- Christopher Null - null@filmcritic.com - http://www.filmcritic.com
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