UNHOOK THE STARS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1997 Scott Renshaw
(Miramax) Starring: Gena Rowlands, Marisa Tomei, Jake Lloyd, Gerard Depardieu, Moira Kelly. Screenplay: Helen Caldwell and Nick Cassavetes. Producer: Rene Cleitman. Director: Nick Cassavetes. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, adult themes) Running Time: 105 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
It has been too long since we have seen Gena Rowlands on screen, but it takes only a few minutes of UNHOOK THE STARS to recall how good she can be. Rowlands plays Mildred Hawkes, a widow and career housewife whom we meet delivering newspapers during the extended shot which plays beneath the opening credits. The route, we learn, belongs to her sullen and rebellious daughter Annie (Moira Kelly), and Mildred mutters to herself as she delivers the papers that this will be the last time she covers for Annie. We know instantly, of course, that this isn't true. Mildred's life is organized around doing things for others, and even when Annie moves out of the house in an act of defiance Mildred continues the paper route because it is something to give structure to her day. She is a woman living in an empty nest who almost doesn't know how to be anything but a wife or a mother.
Mothers tend to get very shabby treatment in the movies, portrayed as perpetual nags or otherwise treated as comic relief, but Rowlands' performance as Mildred is beautifully balanced and convincing. If UNHOOK THE STARS had focused entirely on Mildred, it might have been a great film. Instead, director and co-writer Nick Cassavetes (Rowlands' son with the late director John Cassavetes) splits his story between two characters: Mildred, and her foul-mouthed, troubled neighbor Monica Warren (Marisa Tomei). Early in the film, Monica kicks out her abusive husband (David Thornton), and asks Mildred -- whom she had never met before -- to watch her 6-year-old son J. J. (Jake Lloyd) while she works split shifts as a waitress. Mildred is only too happy to have another child to teach, and watching the relationship between the two is an absolute delight as Mildred dusts off her somewhat old-fashioned parenting methods and begins to feel useful again.
Unfortunately, UNHOOK THE STARS gets side-tracked whenever Tomei's Monica is the center of attention. In a film which is otherwise low-key and observant, Tomei starts to crank up the adorable loud-mouth routine to MY COUSIN VINNY levels. A scene in which Monica is a guest for Thanksgiving dinner -- much to the consternation of Mildred's straight-laced son Ethan (David Sherrill) -- plays like something from a much broader fish-out-of-water comedy, and drags on for an awfully long time. Tomei's performance isn't a bad one; it's just a good one in a different kind of movie. Her character exists mostly to provide the laughs, and whether or not Monica and her estranged husband reconcile is only interesting because it affects Mildred. Cassavetes makes the mistake of treating that issue as one in which we have an equal emotional investment.
There is a similar awkwardness to a sub-plot which finds Mildred in a romantic flirtation with one of Monica's drinking buddies, a French-Canadian truck driver named Big Tommy (Gerard Depardieu). Big Tommy's passes are rather absurd, and not simply because Mildred is a much older woman. Those scenes mark the only occasions where Mildred is treated as slightly pathetic, a lonely old lady getting drunk and finding the attentions of a younger man equally intoxicating. That romance ultimately has little to do with Mildred's development through UNHOOK THE STARS, but Cassavetes doesn't quite seem to realize what a great character he has in Mildred, and what a unique arc her story takes without the distractions of a wacky neighbor or a romantic interest.
That is more of a testimony to how good UNHOOK THE STARS is when Rowlands is center stage than it is to a lack of quality the rest of the time. The script takes Mildred on a subtle but intriguing side-track when Ethan and his wife invite her to move with them to San Francisco, an invitation which Mildred declines. She believes that her choice is an example of her willingness at last to let go of her children, but it is only because she has J. J. to take care of that she feels prepared to do so. When that relationship appears to be pulled out from under her as well, Mildred is forced to acknowledge that she has merely substituted a new person whose happiness is more important to her than her own. Rowlands is sensational as she tries to cope with a life strictly for herself, and UNHOOK THE STARS is a beautiful character study when we are allowed to watch. You only wish you could have watched without the supporting characters jumping up and obscuring your view quite so often.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 mothers superior: 7.
Visit Scott Renshaw's MoviePage http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~srenshaw Subscribe to receive reviews directly via email See details on the MoviePage
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