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2009-05-13 - 2:38 p.m.

Tip(toe)'d off by Videogum (via coworker Jonathan) about this 2003 film, I immediately Netflixed it, thinking it could not be as bad as the write-up suggests.

No, my friends, it is much, much worse.

It mystifies me how this movie got made (and then buried and forgotten like a white-collar crime), and managed to attract some fairly respectable actors (Dinklage, Beckinsall, Arquette, Oldman) when the story, dialogue, and overall vibe of the film is from the Tommy Wiseau absurd-o-vision school of filmmaking.

It features Gary Oldman gussied up in Tim Conway's old Dorf get-up...

tiptoes legs

...playing the twin brother of Matthew McConaughey (reminder--this is a super-serious drama, not a comedy), who plays against type (i.e., not charming, not surfing) as a jerk who manages to hide the existence of his entire dwarf family from his pregnant, live-in fiancee.

But then she finds out!

tiptoes midget

tiptoes2

tiptoes whatever

And from there, the lo-jinx ensue. Peter Dinklage plays a rebellious French Marxist, Patricia Arquette is a "free spirit" who falls in love with him, and the entire little-people community of Hollywood plays, basically, themselves. Kate B's goofy hat in the photo above is meant to signify that she's a kooky artist.

The narrative is totally clunky, none of the plot threads ever resolve, people do and say things that real people (or even semi-believable movie characters) do not say or do, and then the story just kinda ends.

All that said, of course, I still recommend it highly.

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