Hey folks, Harry here with our shark exterminating buddy pal, QUINT with his follow-up review of the film he interviewed Jeffrey Tambor about... NEVER AGAIN... Like I said many in the AICN crew as well as complete strangers informed me that this film is rock solid and terrific... Hopefully I'll be seeing it very soon! Here ya go folks... Enjoy...
Ahoy there, squits and squidies alike. 'Tis, I, the trust crusty seaman, Quint, here with my first report from the South By Southwest Film Festival. As I'm doing SXSW, I'm also busy setting up more interviews outside the fest, including some people from Blow and maybe even a little chat with the biggest Hooligan of them all, Robert Rodriguez. We'll see, but in the meantime I got a few movie reviews comin' at ya'. But I must start with a damn good film that might be overlooked by fest goers out there.
The film is Never Again starring Jeffrey Tambor ("Hey now, it's The Larry Sanders Show!") and Jill Clayburgh. The write up in the SXSW program book makes it sound like a sappy, dreary mid-life crisis romance tale. Truth be told, if I wasn't already at the Paramount and interested in seeing what Jeffrey Tambor had to say before and/or after the movie, then I wouldn't have seen the film because of what I read in the programming book. I'm glad I did, though. The film is flat out funny. It is a drama, but only by a little bit. To break it down, it'd be about 51% romantic drama and 49% straight up comedy, but there are also a lot of scenes that are both, so it's really kinda hard to lump into one particular category.
It's about a 54 year old guy named Christopher (Jeffrey Tambor) and a 54 year old woman named Grace (Jill Clayburgh) who both swear off falling in love after countless romances fail. Both have gone through divorce, both have alienated their children and both can't seem to get anything going with anybody. They both basically give up on romance as a whole, tired of being hurt.
Tambor is a (bad) jazz musician on the side and has a steady stream of younger girls/groupies. One night, he finds that he can't get it up and that starts to give him doubts about himself, so much so that he begins to think that he's turned gay. He goes to his jazz partner, played by the incredible Bill "See... up in them trees" Duke of Predator fame, and asks for advice. The conversation ends with Tambor deciding to find himself a hermaphradite, a chick with a dick, to be the test or even stepping stone into a gay lifestyle.
So, we meet Michael "The bigger the waistband, the deeper the quicksand" McKean of Spinal Tap fame and he joins the ranks of such great actors as Dustin Hoffman, John Lithgow, Jack Lemmon and Gene Hackman. That's right, dude. He pops up in drag. The man has very little screentime, but is hilarious in what he does have.
At this same time, Jill Clayburgh is out on a date with a man she met online. All she knows is he's an actor. This is where the movie rocked my world. I've always said that one thing above any other can help give a movie that extra push into greatness and that is the presence of one or more midgets. So, she ends up on a date with a midget. It doesn't go well... for her, at least.
Her buds console her and take her out to a bar... a gay bar. Tambor also wanders into the bar for a final "Am I gay" test. While there, he meets Jill, whom he mistakes for a man who has had some work done... they end up going out and the rest of the movie is their relationship.
Sounds pretty fucked up, huh? That's just the beginning. There are dildo gags, including a strap-on scene that had the audience laughing for at least 5 minutes straight, there's an amazingly hilarious dream sequence and there's even a midget on a horse. How can you beat that?
Writer/Director Eric Shaeffer deserves most of the credit for this movie. The way people were laughing and the fact that they were doing it for such great lengths of time, you'd think you were watching an early Zucker Bros. movie like Airplane! or Top Secret! The writing is original and witty as all hell. The characters are real and interesting. The story is unconventional and for the most part unpredictable. I never really thought I knew exactly what was going to happen next, but about halfway through I realized I didn't care because I knew that whatever was going to happen, it was going to be either touching or hilarious.
Both Jeffrey Tambor and Jill Clayburgh put in amazing performances. They have terrific chemistry with one another and both have incredible comic timing. They do justice to Shaeffer's writing and bring the right amounts of sorrow, fear, humor and happiness to their roles. Bill Duke, Michael McKean and even fucking Sandy Duncan (that's right, you heard me) bring a great strength to the movie in supporting roles. Sandy fucking Duncan, man.
As far as I know, the film doesn't have distribution as of right now. This boggles the mind. Never Again is perfect arthouse fodder. It's not artsy-fartsy pretentious crap, but it's also a little more serious and edgy than most "dark comedies" or the like. Twenty years ago, this kind of film would have had a place in the mainstream movie houses, but today... I just can't see it playing at a multiplex.
That's not the movie's fault. On the contrary. It's the audience's fault. The movie is fresh, and (for the most part) stays away from all the cliches of the romantic dramedy. That combined with the older cast and the fact that Meg Ryan's not in the movie probably wouldn't draw in the mall crowds. However, this is a fine movie and deserves to be seen and would feel at home the local arthouse or not completely mainstream theaters.
This is the kind of movie one hopes to find when going to a film festival. Too often you're overloaded with either amaturish crap or pretentious crap and I'm not even sure which is worse. Never Again is neither. The movie comes from the heart and as so touches the heart... or the funnybone. It just depends what scene you're talking about.
There you have it squirts. The first of many reports from this old sea salt has come to an end. I have an interview coming very, very, very soon with the star of the above movie, Jeffrey Tambor. It's a lot of fun. I also have a few more reviews on the horizon. 'Til then, this Quint bidding you all a fine farewell and adieu.
-Quint
Squirt yer juicy mail here ya swabs!
