Walking and Talking

Year 14, Day 33 - 2/2/22 - Movie #4,034

BEFORE: Liev Schreiber carries over from "A Rainy Day in New York", and here are the links for the rest of February, so you can get a glimpse at what's coming up:  Anna Paquin, Freddie Prinze Jr., Selma Blair, Reese Witherspoon, Regina King, Victor Garber, James Wolk, Kevin Smith, Fiona Shaw, Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville, Lindsay Duncan, Jeremy Northam & Janet McTeer, Emma Thompson, Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Jeremy Irons, Veronica Ferres, Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgard, Bel Powley, and Joel Michaely - that should get me to March 1, unless I find other films to drop in along the way.  

My general rule all along has been that any films I watched prior to 2009 are off-limits - but I sort of have to make an exception for "Walking and Talking" - I sort of remember watching it in 1997 or so, but it didn't really register. I got divorced in 1996, and met my future second wife that same year, so it was a crazy time.  The details of this film, for whatever reason, just didn't stick in the old memory banks, I can't really remember much about it at all.  My wife and I spent a few years just trying to remember the name of "that film we saw that one time", but neither of us could remember enough about it to look it up.  Either it was that forgettable, or both of us were distracted, I'm not sure.  Anyway, it then took a few years for me to track it down - I even watched "Kicking and Screaming" (not the soccer film with Will Ferrell, the other one that came out in 1995) in 2019, thinking that was the film, and it wasn't.  Eventually it turned up on Showtime, and I was pretty sure that it was the lost film, but still, I didn't remember much about it.  Finally, this year, it's part of the process and I can re-watch it, 25 years later, to try to figure out why it didn't stick the first time.

THE PLOT: Just as Amelia thinks she's ready to quit therapy, her best friend announces her engagement, bringing her anxiety and insecurity right back.

AFTER: Yeah, see, THIS is the kind of neurotic New Yorkers that I'm familiar with, not the type that Woody Allen likes to make films about, the film directors who feel insecure even after winning the top prize at that film festival, or the successful writers who are in a loveless marriage and can't help but pine over their wife's younger sister, while they all go out and dine at Elaine's or the Russian Tea Room.  These are the ground-level New Yorkers, the ones who rent videotapes and play Boggle and have long-distance phone sex.  And of course they all go to therapy, except maybe the one who's a therapist herself, but I think therapists also go to therapy, that's quite common.  

These people are just as self-obsessed with second guessing themselves as any of Woody's characters, they just don't have as much money.  Andrew needs to borrow money from his ex-girlfriend, Amelia, just so he can pay his phone bill and keep having sexy conversations with a woman in California he's never met.  This was pre-cell phone time, pre-internet, too - which explains why everybody had to go to the video rental place if they wanted to watch a movie. Amelia hangs out with Andrew, they're still friends after their break-up, but then she goes out on a date with Bill, who works at the video-store, though she calls him "the ugly guy" behind his back.  Yeah, that might come up as an issue later. Amelia finally wants to quit therapy because she's in such a good place, mentally, but then Laura announces her engagement to live-in boyfriend Frank, and that throws Amelia for a loop, naturally she compares her situation to her best friend's situation, and wonders why she's not engaged or married herself.  

Laura and Frank don't have the perfect relationship, though, Laura is much too controlling and Frank's a prankster, like he's given her so many prank engagement rings that she doesn't know how to react when he gives her the real one.  I've found that it's best not to joke about such things, if somebody fake-proposes to you several times, do not marry that person.  (How long ago was this movie made?  Anne Heche was straight then - this was prior to her relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, then they broke up in 2000 and Heche went back to men.). Laura can't seem to stick with anything or do anything well, though - even after getting engaged to Frank she starts hanging out with a handsome male actor, so just how focused on the marriage IS she?  Then Frank and Laura have a fight and he moves out, so it looks like the wedding is off - or is it back on?  Again, I sort of half-watched this movie before (or maybe watched half of this movie before) and I still couldn't figure out which way the wind was blowing for Laura most of the time. Laura is also a therapist-in-training, and she admits that she's very bad at it.  Umm, so, then, why keep doing it? Just asking. 

The three friends head upstate to Amelia's parents cottage to make plans to have the wedding there, and Amelia gets a couple of obscene phone calls, so she calls Andrew to see if he'll come up and comfort her. (For the kids out there, men used to call random women on the phone and make sexual noises, this was back before everybody had cell phones and just sent dick pics.). I thought maybe Andrew made the obscene phone calls himself, just to get Amelia to freak out and call him for comfort, but I guess that's not the case.  This isn't the movie "Filth", after all.

Amelia and Frank get drunk together, go swimming and reminisce about their relationship - so they're growing closer, but at the same time Laura and Frank are fighting, so I guess the wedding's off?  But then the couple meets for dinner to try to reconcile, and he gives her a "gift" that isn't really a gift, but good news, he got that mole checked out and it's nothing, but again, he's a prankster, so the wedding's off again. WTF?  Who DOES this? Get married or break up, and at this point, I don't really care which, just pick one!

There are some valuable lessons here, I suppose - never let a stranger do your hair and make-up, better to let somebody you trust do it.  Never joke around about engagement rings, or bad-looking moles on your back.  And be nice to the guys working at the video store - they know both your phone number AND the kind of movies you rent.  (This last bit of advice is very helpful, should you find yourself back in 1996 again.). The rest of the film, quite honestly, is a throw-away, now I kind of understand why I didn't remember much about it the first time I saw it - there's just not much THERE there. 

Also starring Catherine Keener (last seen in "We Don't Belong Here"), Anne Heche (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Todd Field (last seen in "Fat Man and Little Boy"), Kevin Corrigan (last seen in "Life of Crime"), Randall Batinkoff (last seen in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Vincent Pastore (last seen in "It Could Happen to You"), Joseph Siravo (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Ritamarie Kelly, Lynn Cohen (last seen in "After Class"), Lawrence Holofcener, Michael Kroll, Isa Thomas, Amy Braverman, Miranda Rhyne, with cameos from Allison Janney (last heard in "The Addams Family" (2019)), Alice Drummond (last seen in "House of D").

RATING: 4 out of 10 answering machine messages (why didn't they just TEXT each other? Oh, right...)