My First Mister (2001)

reviewed by
Laura Clifford


MY FIRST MISTER
---------------

When Jennifer 'call me J' (Leelee Sobieski, "Joy Ride") loses her job at a fringe goth/punk shop, the pierced and tattooed teen heads for the local mall. Amused by watching an older man decorate the window of a men's shop, J asks about his 'Help Wanted' sign. Randall (Albert Brooks, "Out of Sight"), appalled by her appearance, suggests she return without her face jewelry. Both are surprised when she does. J and R fall into an unusual relationship in debuting director Christine Lahti's "My First Mister."

J is the typical, alienated, friendless teen. Even Randall guesses she has a copy of Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar" by her bedside (along with plenty of Anne Rice). As the credit's role, J's writing suicidal goth poetry and decorating it with her own blood. Her mom (Carol Kane, "Addams Family Values") is a chirpy, oblivious type remarried to a man J thinks is named Bob (Michael McKean, "Best in Show"). She rebuffs any interest shown to her in school and informs us 'I don't think of myself as a girl or a woman, just the opposite of a boy.' J frequently imagines exaggerated features on the people around her as she zones out on their words, just like 'Ally McBeal.'

Randall, whom J dubs R, is a fifty-ish guy sleepwalking through the routines of life. Yet Randall is a truth teller not afraid to confront J's subversive nature. Believably, they intrigue each other, with J drawn to R's dry sense of humor ('I'm usually home by 9.' 'What happens at 9?' 'I turn into the same person.'). When J spies Randall speaking to a woman of his own age (Mary Kay Place, "Girl, Interrupted") outside the store, she throws a jealous snit by creating an inappropriate window display. After a confrontation over trust, J and R draw closer together, with J revealing her self-mutilation and R confessing his phobic fears.

Leelee Sobieski simply shines as J, coming to life once she's picked her oddball partner. This young girl can really make love beam from her eyes, just as withdrawal and scorn flashed from them in earlier scenes. As she loses her outer goth trappings (she asks R to pick out work clothes for her then yells 'I look like a Republican!' in horror), her carriage becomes more erect, her head held higher. Brooks is almost as good as a man who temporarily takes one foot out of the grave.

But both are let down by Lahti's direction and television writer Jill Franklyn's script. This pair, initially reminiscent of the Thora Birch/Steve Buscemi pairing of "Ghost World," are never allowed to explore the sexual nature of their relationship. Instead, just as things reach that stage, we're thrown into a Lifetime television movie full of every cliche imaginable. The store, where the pecking order gave shape to the relationship, is forgotten. By film's end, family new and old is gathered around a dinner table, presided over by Brooks on one end, and Sobieski, made up by this time to look like, I swear, an Eastern European matriarch. John Goodman, as J's real dad, looks like the Halloween version of a hippy. The film's further undone by an execrable score that doesn't even have the wit to skewer the elevator music it so resembles.

Usually, fine performances can elevate a film, but not this time. Lahti has undermined her stars and delivered dreck.

C-

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