reMedia!

An entertainment blog that pops culture right in the kisser.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

film | Fake, fake, fake, fake!

It's full-disclosure time, and this one's a kinda-sorta embarrassment for a pop-cultural sponge like myself: I've never seen a single episode of Sex and the City. Phew. Now, let me tell you why: because, in my head, it's the pay-cable equivalent of a movie like THE OH IN OHIO, a lame parade of "outrageous" sexual hijinks in the guise of you-go-girl sauciness. In other words, it's got Parker Posey, as a repressed 30-something ad executive, blissfully twitching her way through an important business presentation as a pager vibrates in her underwear. It's hard to laugh when you feel bad for the character and even worse for the actress playing her, as Posey's too sharp of a comedienne to be trapped in the kind of see-through gags on display here. When, one scene earlier, she slips the device into her panties to give herself a little good-morning buzz on the drive to work, you know exactly where the movie's headed, and also that you'll be grimacing for the duration.

With Posey cast as a woman who's never experienced what Kirstie Alley referred to as "the big one" in an old Emmy acceptance speech, The Oh in Ohio aspires to be a pseudo-riff on The 40-Year-Old Virgin, but the skillfully crude humor in Virgin emerged from the deliciously real (and raucous) personalities created by its crack ensemble of improv actors. Posey and frustrated hubby Paul Rudd (a Virgin alum) make an adorable couple, yes, but when she starts attending self-gratification classes (taught, of course, by Liza Minnelli) and shopping for pleasure aids, he jogs off his suburban paunch and canoodles with a flirtatious high school student (The OC's Mischa Barton), and you might wonder if the favorite films of Oh scribe Adam Wierzbianski have titles that begin with American and end in either Pie or Beauty. In its final act, Posey attains unlikely sexual nirvana with a wealthy widower (Danny DeVito), and the movie finds its own rhythm and briefly flirts with a heretofore absent sweetness, but even this part is less funny than blandly cute. Hey, you know what's a sad irony? A sex farce centered around orgasms in which the laughs don't come. D+

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home