Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Funny ... I don't recall hearing these around the campfire: "Storytelling"

Few directors are as polarizing as Todd Solondz. Even here in my humble abode, he's got two people on completely different pages. I thought "Happiness" was great. My Lovely Wife couldn't get through the first 15 minutes. This boggles my mind ... how can watching Jon Lovitz tear into someone right at the start not suck you in? ("I'm champagne, and you're sh*t!")

(And that, friends, will be the only time you hear me praise Jon Lovitz. Well, that and maybe his bit part in "The Wedding Singer.")

I had seen "Storytelling" a few years ago, and it's probably the least of Solondz's three best-known efforts, with "Happiness" at the top and "Welcome to the Dollhouse" -- the 1995 movie that put him on the map -- getting the silver. By comparison, "Storytelling" is a disappointment, and I watched it again for only two reasons:

1. To see if the first story, "Fiction," would feature a big orange box covering two characters in a rough sex scene.
2. To remember what happens in the second story, "Non-Fiction." I think I fell asleep the last time.

Regarding No. 1, "Fiction" has white college student Selma Blair -- who usually plays the fully-clothed prude in movies -- being quietly manipulated by her black English professor, played by Robert Wisdom. He's been in a lot of stuff and is pretty scary here as a big, silent a$$hole.

The scene everyone talks about is a rape/roleplaying/just uncomfortable sex scene in general, and the first time I saw "Storytelling" it was presented in all its glory. As shown in theaters and on IFC, though, we get that orange box, which is pretty weird. You hear everything, but you don't see the full picture of rough sex. That's just as well, believe me.

In "Non-Fiction" -- the longer story -- Paul Giamatti is a shlub who fancies himself a documentary filmmaker, and the story opens with him pathetically working up the courage to call in a favor to an old high school friend. It's really painful and quite good, but hey ... it's Giamatti.

Our man Paul comes across the perfect example of today's aimless youth in Scooby Livingston, a lazy high school senior who maybe wouldn't mind being a talk show host like Conan O'Brien. Not that we wants to work for it, of course. Scooby's family is plenty weird, from uptight dad John Goodman to jittery mom Julie Hagerty -- who's always jittery, come to think of it -- to smarty-pants little brother Jonathan Osser, who also torments their Latin housekeeper with his observations and questions. That's pretty uncomfortable, too.

You see the pattern here: Solondz likes to make people squirm. The problem in "Storytelling" is while the characters are amusing and some scenes are well-done, I didn't get a good sense of an overall theme as with "Happiness" (sad people dealing with obsession/addiction) or "Dollhouse" (awkward coming of age). The whole "Fiction/Non-Fiction" thing seemed to be just some weird structure, not any kind of lesson. And without that, this kind of movie kind of leaves you wanting. Not wanting Jon Lovitz, mind you, but wanting.

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