BEFORE: Steve Martin carries over from "The Big Year", and he's going to get me to Movie #2,100 as well. Yes, there are two different films where Steve Martin plays a dentist, the first being "Little Shop of Horrors", of course.
THE PLOT: A dentist finds himself a murder suspect after a sexy patient seduces him into prescribing her drugs.
AFTER: Yesterday I was discussing honesty with regards to bird-watching, and tonight's film is about the other side of that equation - the little lies that people tell each other to get out of tricky situations, and how they can grow and compound. The metaphor used is that a little lie is like a little piece of food stuck in one's teeth, and if it's not flossed out it can rot through the enamel and destroy an entire tooth.
But like "The Big Year", it's got a tricky tone. People go into a Steve Martin (or a Jack Black) film expecting a certain kind of comedy, and "The Big Year" was nothing like a laugh-a-minute comedy, and neither is this. "The Big Year" had some heartfelt moments, with a little bit of romance, some athletic competition, and some soul searching as characters took stock of their lives, seeking to balance their hobbies with their careers and their relationships. This is more like a crime film, or perhaps a dark comic parody of a crime film, it's tough to tell.
The dramatic situation depicted here is something like a sweater with a loose thread, and you might want to pull on it to remove it, when perhaps you really should cut it, because you're likely to unravel the whole damn thing. A dentist appears to have a great life, with a thriving practice and a beautiful fiancée. But his no-good alcoholic brother shows up looking for a place to crash, and a seductive new patient also appears on the scene to scam some drugs out of him.
So maybe the takeaway here is just that honesty is the best policy, as well as the 2nd best and third best. Really, it's the only way to go, unless you want to start telling large lies to cover up your small lies, and so on. But maybe your takeaway will be "don't let your brother stay at your house" or "don't cheat on your girlfriend", or something personal like that. For me, it's also, "Man, it's been a really long time since I've been to the dentist." Like, over a decade. But I'm not aware of any dental problems, other than the big chip in my front tooth that I've been meaning to fix for the last 30 years - really, it's not necessary and part of me thinks I'd just be vain if I got that fixed. It's been so long since I've seen a dentist that I'm almost afraid to go, because then I'd have to admit to a dentist how long it's been since I've seen a dentist.
Right, the film. There's a point here where things spiral out of control beyond reason, at least in my opinion, by which I mean that they cease being believable - of course, your mileage may vary. I have to question whether the solutions near the end might be worse than the problems that they're intended to solve, and that means that they don't seem practical at all.
Also starring Helena Bonham Carter (last seen in "The Lone Ranger"), Laura Dern (last seen in "The Master"), Lynne Thigpen (last seen in "Random Hearts"), Elias Koteas (last seen in "Shutter Island"), Scott Caan (last seen in "Gone in 60 Seconds"), Chelcie Ross (last seen in "The Last Boy Scout"), Keith David (last seen in "Cloud Atlas"), with a cameo from Kevin Bacon (last seen in "Where the Truth Lies").
RATING: 4 out of 10 x-rays
No comments:
Post a Comment