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Southern Voice/April 25, 1991
17
COUNTERCULTURE
FILM REVIEW
The Marrying Man and
Defending Your Life
Basinger and Baldwin flop; Streep and Brooks Advance
by Terry Francis
The Marrying Man ★ Alec Baldwin
and Kim Basinger have taken considerable
heat for their alleged unprofessional behav
ior on the set of this film, which has
received the most negative advance press of
any movie in recent memory. Basinger is
reputed to have said within earshot of Neil
Simon, the film's scenarist, something like,
"Whoever wrote this script doesn't know
anything about comedy." And after seeing
the film, I'm inclined to agree with her.
But it's a pity that nobody had the nerve
to mumble within Ms. Basinger’s earshot,
"Whoever told her she could sing?" In a
related incident, Mr. Baldwin, in a flurry of
temper presumably borne of mounting ten
sions on the set, is alleged to have shouted
at the crew in a state of near hysteria, some
thing like, "You bunch of faggots!"
In the film, Baldwin plays a rich, hand
some playboy about to marry Elisabeth
Shue (sweetly beguiled) for respect rather
than for love. Then, in a pre-wedding bach
elor celebration at a Vegas dive, he lays eyes
(and before the night is over, everything
else) on Kim Basinger, the resident saloon
singer and girlfriend of mobster Bugsy
Siegel (Armand Assante, sexily menacing
and the best thing in the movie, as always).
In the course of the film, the Vegas pair
marry and divorce repeatedly, and we're
meant to find them irresistible. But every
thing about this movie seems tired and
cmde and pulled out of cold storage. The
cliches fly. The picture feels like a disap
pointing run through for the real thing that
turns out to have been not worth doing in
the first place.
Baldwin and Basinger, for all the passion
of their reported off screen romance, have
virtually no rapport together on screen.
They appear to express their contempt for
the material by simply walking through their
roles. When singing, Ms. Basinger, particu
larly, hangs herself out to dry—the combi
nation of her voice and Jeffrey Homaday’s
dumb-sleaze choreography insult the audi
ence's taste and intelligence.
What's going on when an actress allows
herself to be this sadly exposed (and
Basinger "is" an actress, as she proved so
movingly in Fool for Love)? Ms. Basinger
mbs her hips and thighs as if trying to fit
into a dress now far too small for her at the
same time her indifferent singing goes on
and on.
Mr. Baldwin, apparently believing that
blue eyes and self-confidence constitute a
performance, mugs his way through his role,
finally arriving at some private clearing of
arrogance and narcissism. Apart from the
sloppy editing, the film has been made with
uninspired care (direction, acting, writing,
visual design, all are predictable).
It is sometimes the case that people in
positions of power lose their bearings in
terms of assessing their own talent and limi
tations. Surrounded by sycophants either
unwilling or afraid to tell them the truth,
writers and actors are apt to diminish them
selves publicly in ways that linger in the
audience's memory. This awful movie is
merely the latest testament to that process.
Defending Your Life ★★ 1/2 An agree
ably mild and sometimes witty film, starring
Albert Brooks (he also wrote and directed)
Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks in "Defending Your Life," which asserts
that it's courage in this life that advances you to the next.
as a rising L.A. advertising exec who zooms
into the next world when he gets smashed
by a bus while driving his new BMW. The
sensibility depicted in the film is watered-
down New Age: we advance to the next
plane of existence on the basis of illustra
tions of our courage in this one.
The film dwells on the theme that fear of
taking the lead in one's own life is what
holds most of us back. Well, nothing new
there. But is the lack of an assertive facet to
one's personality really an emblem of a
lower consciousness, of deficient morality?
(Would that some of our political and reli
gious leaders understood the virtue of
doubt.)
But Brooks manages to wring some
laughs out of admittedly banal material, and
the film is socially on target in some of its
satire. The casting is very fine. Meryl
Streep brings humor and flashes of authentic
feeling to her role as a woman with whom
Brooks falls in love. And Rip Tom is
impeccably cheerful as Brooks' "defender"
before the tribunal that will decide if Brooks
should advance to the next world or return
to Earth for some extra fine tuning. Tom’s
phrasing and the spin he gives to his line
readings are satirical embroidery.
And Lee Grant, as Brooks' prosecutor,
vividly embodies the modem philosophy of
"Nothing personal, it's only my job when I
do everything I can to min your life."
(There's also a brief cameo appearance by
an actress whose radiant manner nearly
causes the film to give off surreal sparks.)
Far less successful are Brooks' efforts to
bring some measure of humor to the modem
pang in all our minds of AIDS. Clearly, he
doesn't mean to offend; he simply hasn’t
thought through exactly what he's trying to
say, and the damaged humor can only lie
there, uncomfortably. In the end, there's not
too much to this film, but now and again
parts of it are lovely.
THE NEW FESTIVAl
NATIONAL GAY