December 24–31, 1998

movies

I Think I'm Gonna Hurl

The pile of wasted celluloid at the bottom of Misanthrope Hill continues to grow with the addition of Hurlyburly, Anthony Drazan's directionless adaptation of David Rabe's loud but hollow play. Without substantially "opening up" the play's action, the movie is set mainly in the soullessly modern Hollywood Hills condo shared by Eddie (Sean Penn) and Mickey (Kevin Spacey). A pair of bottom-of-the-food-chain movie industry wheeler-dealers, they spend most of their time doing large amounts of drugs, trying to get laid, and hanging out with the similarly unappealing Phil (Chazz Palminteri) and Artie (Garry Shandling).

There's a fine line between making a movie about unpleasant people and making an unpleasant movie, and Hurlyburly is well on the other side of that line. There's no irony or satire in the film's treatment of these four pathetic lugs, no way of seeing outside their world, and without an alternate viewpoint to counterpoint their self-indulgent misogynies, Hurlyburly is trapped into supporting them, if only by default.

The film's action is driven by women who come into these men's lives by what is apparently the only route: as sexual objects. There's Bonnie (an oddly cast Meg Ryan), the "professional relaxer" who seems to be part whore, part den mother; Donna (Anna Paquin), the seductively costumed teenage runaway whom Artie presents to the others as a "CARE package"; and Darlene (Robin Wright Penn), the makeup artist whom Eddie only gets serious with after she's slept with Mickey. But while the film's generally seedy air succeeds in attaching a stench to the way these women are treated—when Phil throws Bonnie out of a moving car, we're informed in no uncertain terms that it is Just Not Right-Hurlyburly's blasé, world-weary tone can only read as a cynical acceptance that this is simply the way things work.

From Your Friends and Neighbors through Happiness and Very Bad Things, there's been an unwelcome mini-glut of films with similar viewpoints, self-importantly trumpeting their own sophistication as they expose people as the venal, rapacious, morally bankrupt souls they all are. But despite these films' smarmy, morally superior tone, the only service they're really providing is reminding people of things any sensible person already knows. We all know what that stuff is on the sidewalk, but most of us have the sense to step over it.

-Sam Adams