THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS & DOGS (1996)
A film review by Rebecca Wan
Copyright 1996 The Flying Inkpot
Directed by: Michael Lehmann Written by: Audrey Wells Produced by: 20th Century Fox / Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. Cast: Uma Thurman (Noelle Slusarsky), Janeane Garofalo (Abby Barnes), Ben Chaplin (Brian). Run Time: 97 minutes Rating: **1/2 out of ***** Theatres: Lido, Jurong.
PURR-FECT STEREOTYPES
THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS should really be called THE TRUTH ABOUT HOW TO DRESS IN A HOLLYWOOD FILM. On the surface it may seem to be what everyone says it is: a Cyrano de Bergerac story with a gender twist and a sweetheart ending blah blah blah ... Yawn. This we know, and the ending we can guess without even stepping into this film. In THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS, Janeane Garofalo is an intelligent and cultured animal guru who runs--yes, get this--a radio show, where she soothes away her callers' pet problems by recognizing and diagnosing every symptom they decribe. Garofalo plays the violin, reads thick books and is one with every single animal she meets, except for men. Men ignore her because she is short and brunette, and does not wear concealer.
Unlike her beautiful neighbour Uma Thurman, who lives in a terraced ground floor apartment, has never received gift books without pictures (how many times have we heard that one?), who always wears long, swishy, spring dresses, sweaters tied around her waist and is blonde, tall, thin and cutely dorky with her oversized, liquid eyes and sharp cheekbones and dewy skin, Janeane is a little rounder, she's petite, she wears dark colors, but most of all, she wears her hair in a Kathy Bates do from MISERY. In MISERY Kathy Bates played a psychotic nurse who breaks handsome James Caan's legs so that she can keep him in her house with her. Kathy Bates was also overweight, and she was plain and didn't have a boyfriend, so, clearly, she was insane. In DIABOLIQUE Kathy Bates wore her hair in a slightly more decent style, but she wore pants all the time and didn't comb her hair, so, clearly, she was a man-basher with lesbian tendencies. Unlike Kathy in both films, Uma Thurman is a blonde goddess for whom things always work out. As Janeane herself puts it: "when you burp men think it's cute, when you throw up they want to hold your hair back." In CATS & DOGS, Uma dresses in pastel colours all the time and has a cute, layered wispy haircut, but because she is so beautiful she also isn't afraid to pull her hair back for that sixties' "no fringe" look that makes women look baldfaced unless they have good bone structure.
What this all goes to show is that in the fabled worlds that Hollywood creates for us to lose ourselves in, women are women and men are men. Men, of course, can sometimes be women, as Patrick Swayze and Denzel Washington proved in TO WONG FOO, THANKS FOR EVERYTHING, JULIE NEWMARR, but when women dress like men it means that men don't find them attractive. So although Janeane is short and dumpy, she wears *skirts*, which proves that she is potentially attractive to men, and that all she needs is better hair and some pore minimizer.
But when Janeane falls in love with a man, she doesn't go out and get a makeover as you would expect, but instead convinces gorgeous Uma to pretend to *be* her. Throughout the whole movie, Janeane is very insecure about her looks, and director Michael Lehmann, who also directed HEATHERS and AIRHEADS, is always pointing out to us, the audience, that men ignore her but cannot stop looking at Uma. Men don't hold doors open for Janeane, but when it comes to Uma, they get into accidents because their eyes are on her crossing the road instead of on the cars in front of them. Naturally, Janeane, who has already lost a lot of weight since her portly days in REALITY BITES, is somewhat perturbed about this, and even though she and Brain (Ben Chaplin) hit it off on the phone and connect so well that they can have sex without even meeting each other, she worries that when Brian, who is sexy, arty and has an accent, finds out he has been shtupping her instead of the Goddess Uma, he will be angry and she will lose him.
Unaware that she is in the safe zone and will in all likelihood get her man--she wears skirts, is not as huge as Kathy Bates, and also looks very nice in russet tones--Janeane gets very tangled in the process of deceiving poor Brian, who, bless his soul, is a dimwit not to realize that Janeane, whom he talks to on the phone all the time, has a much richer and lower voice than Uma's higher-pitched, perky drawl. Things get rather messy towards the end, but you'll probably want to find out how it turns out for yourself. The movie mostly champions Janeane's cause, although Uma is portrayed as a nice, well-meaning person, and all through it I wanted to reach out and comfort her, and say, "Janeane, it's really ok. You're almost there. You were only Wynona's best friend in REALITY BITES, but you've lost so much weight that you're now a lead veterinarian. Ricki Lake lost a hundred pounds and they gave her the number two talk show in America. Oprah is number one only because 9 million people tune in every day just to see how much weight she's lost or put on that day (I say "lost or put on" because with Oprah it's such a mystery all the time, and that's why I watch Oprah too). One day, Janeane, you'll be thin enough to have your own bathing suit scene, and then you'll be the topactress in Hollywood."
Although its overall premise is a little silly, I enjoyed this movie very much because of Janeane herself, who is funny, sharp and delivers her lines with a wryness that reminds me of old Hollywood wise-cracking heroines like Bette Davis. And despite the silliness of her being so hip that Brian gives her a book of letters from Sartre to Simone Bouvoir, yet still inable to fathom that Brian loves her for her brain and not for Uma's body, this movie moves along quickly, has some nice, funny lines that will make you smile, and is a relief from movies with Tom Cruise wearing rubber masks and dangling from ceilings.
The Flying Inkpot's rating system: * Wait for the video. ** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha! *** Pretty good, bring a friend. **** Amazing, potent stuff. ***** Perfection. See it twice.
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