Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Great nick, DTS. Sorry it took me a few days to dig through the e-mail box and find this one, but I’m glad I did. I think this is our first review of this film, De Vito’s follow-up to the film Roger Ebert chose as 2002’s very worst, DEATH TO SMOOCHY. Is De Vito going to rebound, or is this another of his frantic dark comedies no one ends up seeing?
Hey Harry,
Just call me Double Team Supreme. I'm a grad student in KC, MO. I sent in a test screening review for Dirty Pretty Things under a different name a few months back but never saw it on the site. I caught a screening of Duplex with Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller in Kansas City tonight (Wed, Feb 5th). When I tried to read up on the movie the night before the screening there was surprisingly very little out there on the web about the flick. I found out that it's a joint venture produced by Flower Films (Drew's company) and Red Hour Films (Ben's company). Danny DeVito took over the director's chair after Greg Mottola (The Daytrippers) dropped out. The film has obviously had some problems as it was originally was scheduled to drop on 08/16/02 (guess the studio was scared off by 2 powerhouse movies by the name of "Pluto Nash" and "Blue Crush"). Yeah right!
Well anyhow, it has been pushed back several times and it's fifth release date is now October of 03. Probably more info than anyone wanted or needed to know. Sorry. I'm new at this. Cut me some slack you bastards.
I got to the screening at the AMC Barrywoods 24 on a snowy Wednesday evening at about 5:45 for a 7:30 screening and the friends I met there and I were about the 30th or so people in line. They had to start turning people away by 7:00 but for some damn reason they didn't start the show till about 07:45. The gave the usual spiel about how we were one of the very first audiences to see the movie and the temp color and sound stuff but the movie looked mostly finished with the soundtrack completely finished and only a few spots on the film needed cleaning up. The sound was about freakin loud as hell, but no biggie. The plot centers on on a young married couple composed of Alex (Stiller), a writer with a book deadline looming and Nancy (Barrymore), his fashion magazine layout designer wife. The couple is house shopping and has found the perfect townhouse in a mostly upscale area of Brooklyn. The only problem is that the house has the upstairs blocked off and they have a rent controlled ancient tenant who can't be evicted. The old lady tenant named Mrs. Connelly is played, in a pretty funny debut role, by Eileen Essell.
The old lady seems very ill and nice enough when they look at the house so they decide to buy it hoping that she might keel over in a few years so they can have their run of the entire duplex. As it turns out Mrs. Connelly is the tenant from hell and makes their lives completely miserable. The romance between Stiller and Barrymore is sweet and pretty believable and the movie begins well enough and has several very, very funny moments throughout. The old lady keeps causing things in the couples life to crumble. Police officer Ted (Robert Wisdom) is constantly showing up to place blame on the couple and write them various citations for problems with the building that the tenant complains about but that she also is the cause of (yeah I realize that i ended the sentence with a preposition. screw you.). I am not going to go into the many laugh out loud funny scenes in the movie because I don't wanna ruin the only real surprises this film offers. It isn't a spoiler to say that a little over midway into the movie, Alex and Nancy decide that Mrs. Connelly must die. While I can totally see their reasons for wanting her dead (she is a really mean bitch), this is where the movie lost all joy for me. At this point the film turns into a War of the Roses, Throw Momma from the Train debacle. It just becomes so mean spirited that I had a hard time stomaching the last 30 minutes or so of the film. I am not gonna reveal much more here but suffice it to say that the movie ends in a predictable, if not safe, way. I have a hard time believing that folks will turn out to see this in theaters after they hear what a downer final act it has.
Don't get me wrong, it's not dark, funny and cool. The ending is somewhat predictable, mean-spirited and just all around no fun.
As I said before, there were several moments in the film in which the test audience was rolling with laughter. I was among those laughing but, sadly, some of the funniest scenes in the movie were just gross out jokes. Those jokes are just fine with me but still pretty basic humor. Harvey Fierstein plays the evil house broker in a performance with no surprises and Officer Ted is played with a similar lack of inspiration. The three real stars of the movie (Stiller, Barrymore, and Essell) all turn in nice performances and moviegoers could do worse than this very funny, but ultimately joyless comedy. Why can't Danny DeVito just direct a funny movie that doesn't try to be something other than a comedy? At least he didn't decide to stick himself in one of the scenes. Finally, this is probably no better than a rental for all but the biggest half-ass dark comedy fans. Oh and Harry, my harsh comments aren't for you, they are for all those bastard talk backers. (just having a little fun).
DOUBLE TEAM SUPREME
Hmmmm... sounds like the Coen Bros. remake of THE LADYKILLERS is going to make much better comic use of a similar setup. I guess we’ll see soon...
"Moriarty" out.
