WALKING AND TALKING
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1996 Christopher Null
Well, a lot more talking than walking.... And not to be confused with last year's KICKING AND SCREAMING.
And not at all a bad movie, and the most aptly titled film out right now. WALKING AND TALKING is basically just that, focusing on best friends Laura (Anne Heche) and Amelia (Catherine Keener) and their comedic struggles with life and love at the dawn of the big 3-0.
Laura is about to marry Frank (Todd Field) and is having the jitters. Amelia is a confirmed, miserable bachelorette, and she dallies with the local video store clerk (Kevin Corrigan), aka "The Ugly Guy," and ex-boyfriend Andrew (Liev Schreiber).
And essentially, they all just talk. A lot. And it's pretty funny, with topics of conversation running the gamut from cat vomit to therapy to schlock horror flicks. The characters themselves have also been taken to the hilt. Frank isn't just a jewelry designer -- he designs only the really tacky stuff you'd see in a Montgomery Wards catalog. Schreiber, the funniest of the lot, reprises his phone sex-obsessed character from DENISE CALLS UP, and has an addiction to porn videos. Then there's headliners Amelia and Laura, whose collective litany of neuroses makes me look like a sane person.
So yes, it's funny, but at some point I kept wondering, do people really talk like this? The conversations tend to get a bit extreme and explicit -- running into candid sexual discussions and descriptions of bodily functions that would put off Madonna. Humorous? Sure. Realistic? I don't think so.
That's unfortunate, because this reliance on over-the-top dialogue is the only thing that really detracts from the picture, which is otherwise a frank and funny depiction of urban life in the 90's. (And I was a little disappointed by the lack of a real ending, too.)
So no ending on this review, either, but you get a parting fun fact: watch for people's kitchens -- everyone has the same toaster oven.
RATING: ****
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
-Christopher Null / null@filmcritic.com / Writer-Producer -Visit the Movie Emporium at http://www.filmcritic.com/ -and Null Set Productions at http://www.filmcritic.com/nullset.htm
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