July 12–19, 2001

movie shorts

Fast Food Fast Women

Ripping several reams from Woody Allen’s late-’70s playbook, writer-director Amos Kollek’s lackluster comedy of romantic misconnection in the Big Apple tries to spice up its humdrum plot with a handful of absurd twists, including an ending so howlingly disjunctive you may be tempted to test the effect of airborne snacks on your local theater screen. (Not that we’re suggesting it, mind.) Anna Thomson, whose crooked-faced beauty is the film’s greatest break with convention, plays Bella, an unlucky-in-love coffee-shop waitress whose flightiness is signified by the fact that she likes to step out on her fire escape naked. While Bella pursues a clunky flirtation with a cab driver (Jamie Harris) who’s suddenly found himself caring for two children, her regular customer Paul (Robert Modica) is trying to learn the rules of sexagenarian dating with Emily (Louise Lasser). Like a low-budget Nora Ephron, Kollek merely plunders the bones of those who have gone before, leaving only skeletons in his wake.

—Sam Adams