MIAMI RHAPSODY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1995 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: David Frankel writes and tries to
carve out a piece of Woody Allen territory with
this film that borrows much of the style we
associate with Allen. His story is just too slight
to hold the gags together. Rating: 0 (-4 to +4)
David Frankel, who wrote and directed MIAMI RHAPSODY, has a style much too close to Woody Allen's to be a coincidence. He starts with a jazz song, Louis Armstrong's rendition of "Just One of Those Things," under fairly plain-looking credits. Allen would use white on black, Frankel uses lavender on black, but it clearly is a conscious imitation. And the dialogue has the main character making just the sort of wisecracks that Woody Allen would write. And at least an imitation of Allen at his most creative would be amusing. Unfortunately, the story is slight and more than a little boring. Part of the problem is that the whole plot can be described in two sentences. I will not divulge the second sentence here, but the first is that Gwyn Marcus (Sarah Jessica Parker) cannot commit to her relationship with her fiance because every other couple she knows hasa relationship that is falling apart because of infidelity. The plot, told in flashback and flashbacks-within-flashbacks goes through one relationship after another, mostly in her own family, and each relationship has one or both people fooling around on the side. The plot has more detail than that, of course, but it all adds up to Gwyn's unwillingness to commit in her relationship. Parker's Gwyn narrates the film staring right into the camera, then popping into connecting dramatized anecdotes about her family. Her father (Paul Mazursky), himself a philanderer, correctly suspects her mother of infidelity. The mother is played by Mia Farrow who appears in this imitation Woody Allen film purely for the artistic challenge of the role, no doubt. Other flashbacks show Gwyn's siblings, each totally self-absorbed and happy to cheat on any relationship he or she has.
Sarah Jessica Parker is clearly a Woody-Allen-like character, alternately indignant and sarcastic. One can almost hear Allen's delivery of some of her lines. But she has a good delivery and a screen presence that may get noticed after this film. Antonio Banderas plays Antonio, the male nurse of Gwyn's grandmother who gets involved with the weird relationships in the Marcus family. Gil Bellows is Gwyn's fiance, who seems likable enough in the role as just about the only decent person in the film, but he does not have a lot to do. Kevin Pollak is also memorable as Gwyn's older brother who leaves his own pregnant wife for the wife of his business partner.
Perhaps MIAMI RHAPSODY could have worked better as a comedy with more likable characters. Instead there is a cold satisfaction in the poetic justice that these characters are screwing up their lives and will likely continue to do so. In spite of the warm Miami settings, this is a cold comedy about people it is hard to like or care about. The story is told with affection for this family, but Frankel is not yet a good enough writer to make us care for his characters. This film gets a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.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