LOVELY AND AMAZING (Nicole Holofcener, 2002)

Reviewed: July 21, 2002

In a sentence: A few days in the life of a mother and her three daughters.

Why Lovely and Amazing is a bad, bad, futile movie I absolutely DO NOT recommend.

1) The two main characters are infuriating, obnoxious, self-centered, shallow and deluded. Catherine Keener's character is utterly repugnant. For half the film she's an unemployed wannabe artist, the other half a one hour photo clerk who almost starts an affair with a 17 year old. In other words: Keener plays the same take charge, fuck-off, the-world-revolves-around-me bitch she always does and fails to inject even an oz. of sympathy into the role. The character starts a shithead and finishes exactly the same. No character arc. No evolution. No "hey I'm a total fucking asshole, maybe I should shape up" revelation. Is the idea she's hopelessly stuck? Well, fine. But since Lovely and Amazing has absolutely no plot either, it is the writer/director's obligation to go further than that. It is the writer/director's responsibility to make her characters worth watching for an hour and a half. And frankly: A one-note cunt is not worth watching for more than five minutes.

Then there is Keener's sister, played by Emily Mortimer. She's a struggling actress. She's very pretty but she thinks she's ugly. As the writer/director so blatantly tells us, "she's insecure." Oh, but her mother thinks she's -- and I quote -- "lovely and amazing." {Hands hover above keyboard as Jared realizes there is nothing else he can write about her.} Just like Keener's character, Mortimer (a very talented actress) is given nothing to do but act her character around in circles.

PS: Mortimer's character is so kind she frequently adopts stray dogs. At the end of the film, one of those stray dogs brutally attacks Mortimer, rips apart a stretch of her face and then that's essentially the last we see of her character. I can only assume this is some half-assed attempt by Ms. writer/director to make a statement about how the best laid plans can go awry, how yes, you can care about how you look and worry about your body all you want, but cruel, vicious, unattractive things will happen regardless. I don't know. Instead I felt like I was just watching the writer/director see how cruel she can be to her characters.

(In a dissenting review Ebert writes: "We have already seen how obsessed she is with her body, and yet she never even mentions the scarring that will result; it's as if the dog bite releases her from a duty to be perfect." To that I respond: Nonsense, but nice try. I'm telling you flat out the movie all but ignores Mortimer after she's bitten. She's not given enough screen time for us to jump to the conclusion that the dog bite has served as release.)

Meanwhile Brenda Blethyn as the mother is horribly wasted as she spends the entire film delusional -- in the hospital -- following liposuction surgery, rarely even interacting with her daughters.

2) The secondary characters are the film's most intriguing, though their roles are minute and they are consistently tossed aside/forgotten about. We find out Keener's husband is having an affair, though nada-nothing-zero-zilch comes of it. I'm sure that development was an afterthought, after Ms. writer/director realized that Keener's character is so fucking horrid something must be done to make her a tiny tiny bit more digestible. And as I mentioned, Keener almost has an affair with 17 year old high school student Jake Gyllenhaal (star of the masterful Donnie Darko) but their relationship actually only comprises a single date before -- via circumstances entirely incomprehensible to me -- Gyllenhaal's mom has Keener arrested for statutory rape. Meanwhile Mortimer has a one night stand with Dermot Mulroney's at first repellent, chauvinist, cliché movie star, but whom then reveals a potential sliver of depth. Yeah, too bad he doesn't have any more scenes.

3) A plot, to reiterate, is nonexistent. Not just a plot, but a story is nonexistent. Not just a story, but interesting scenes that advance the characters one iota are nonexistent.

4) Stupid contrivances facilitate crucial scenes. These include, but are not limited to: (1) Mortimer happens upon Mulroney at a grocery store (I think it was a grocery store), thus allowing for aforementioned one night stand. (2) Blethyn's third daughter -- an eight year old black girl she adopted -- runs away from Mortimer who is caring for her at the time. Mortimer is hysterical and calls the police etc. Luckily Keener happens across the little girl at the McDonalds she has in fact run away to! Yay! How fucking convenient!

5) The visuals are atrocious. Lovely and Amazing was shot on digital video and it (not surprisingly) looks awful. Flat, drab, washed out. The problem is compounded by the director's complete lack of visual keenness. Every shot feels like we're just going through the motions and this aura extends to every single aspect of the film. A friend of mine saw Lovely and Amazing recently. I asked him what he thought. He responded he's been so obsessed with the French New Wave of late, he doesn't even know. He's too wrapped up in Godard, Truffaut, etc., can't get them out of his brain for long enough to consider anything else. How appropriate I thought. There's a group who epitomizes the joy to be had in making films. They made unpredictable, explosive, frenetic, fun, daring movies. Everything Lovely and Amazing is most certainly not.

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