Marigold

Ali Larter Goes Bollywood...

I must admit that I’m not sure why Ali Larter isn’t a bigger star. I mean yes, of course, she earned her big cinematic break playing a Varsity Blues bimbo but she made intelligent choices thereafter with the cult teen scarefest Final Destination. And despite a Hollywood absence for a few years to take a break from the sex-kitten characters being offered her way (Allure, 7/08), she’s rebounded much better than other late ’90s starlets who also first portrayed bimbos, such as American Pie’s Shannon Elizabeth. I guess, in retrospect, Larter and her fans should be grateful that she doesn’t have Elizabeth’s primarily straight-to-DVD career but the potential for Larter is undeniable.
Case in point: before her TV series Heroes “jumped the shark,” you couldn’t open a magazine without press covering it with multi-page spreads and articles, yet all the ink spilled seemed to surround the likable, funny Japanese newcomer Masi Oka’s Hiro and Hayden Panettiere’s perky “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World” character. Yet, honestly, while the sunny young Panettiere was used as the face of the show to maximize its youth appeal as the new Buffy, as far as women were concerned on Heroes, it was Larter and not Panettiere who played the best character in season one (before I gave up on it last Fall). As a New Age Film Noir heroine, Larter played a combo of the virgin and the whore dual personality all rolled into one without the cheesy melodrama of a daytime soap and we never knew which side of Larter’s character we’d see next.
And while granted she’s no Meryl Streep, in the film Marigold as well as a recent independent screener called Crazy I was lucky enough to view (currently making the rounds in the film-festival circuit), she gets the chance to show a range that we haven’t seen before and both films involve music. While in the biopic Crazy, she plays the long-suffering wife of a talented guitarist, in writer/director Willard Carroll’s likable sleeper Marigold, Larter takes her biggest risk yet and gets her diva shot at Bollywood glory.
Due to the rightful insistence of casting directors that she’s just not “sympathetic enough,” D-List actress Marigold Lexton (Larter) whose own boyfriend describes her as a “four-star bitch,” has made a career appearing in numerous direct-to-DVD sequels of famous films. After earning a horny fanbase with turns in "Fatal Attraction 3" and "Basic Instinct 3," Marigold’s career has taken such a status dive that as the film opens she boards a twenty-hour flight to Bombay in coach class and bumps along during a hellish twelve-hour cab ride to Goa for her latest gig in Kama Sutra 3.
After screaming at her agents and boyfriend via cell phone the entire way (and clearly loving the chance to play a hammy stereotype as Larter kills even Carroll’s most throwaway lines), eventually her feet touch land in Goa. However, instead of a red carpet, she quickly discovers that due to the shady dealings in the background Sutra’s Indian producers have landed in jail and the German bankers fled to Singapore to avoid a similar fate when financing fell through. Further distraught when her fed-up agent fires her over the telephone and she realizes she was only provided with a one-way ticket to India, the unkind Marigold relies on the kindness of strangers in the Bollywood film community as she tries a way back to the states.

Although instead of a temporary layover, her stay is lengthened the duration of a film shoot, when she’s shocked to discover that while blonde actresses are a dime a dozen in synthetic La La Land, in Goa, her exotic golden-tresses and experience working even in, as Kathy Griffin would call, D-List films, makes her a valuable commodity. Soon, the director is reworking his Bollywood production to feature Marigold in a starring role and although (much like Larter), her character has zero musical or dancing training, her new friends quickly take her under their wing, including the gorgeous and guileless choreographer Prem (Bollywood sensation Salman Khan). A romantic relationship predictably develops but culture clash and prior commitments (both with Marigold’s lackluster relationship back in the states and Prem’s familial obligations) threaten to get in their way.

A true fairy-tale for the film’s duration—tinged with beautiful visuals and featuring seven original songs about the various stages of love (of which only some are successful), Carroll’s Marigold is an earnest and warmly romantic guilty pleasure. And as the director noted on the DVD that it's an “affectionate homage” rather than a parody of the genre, he manages to produce a Bollywood-light film that even the uninitiated will find appealing without immersing themselves fully into the genre. Famous for their multiple-hour running times and sudsy plots that nonetheless engross (like the Academy Award-nominated three-hour “cricket-match musical,” Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India), Bollywood isn’t for everyone. Like sushi, country music, and the comedy of Dane Cook—you’re either a fan or you’re not and oftentimes it’s hard to analyze why.

While ultimately, as far as I’m concerned, I really enjoy the genre, I do grant that I couldn’t watch too many of them in a short time period. In the same token if pressed—genre-wise, I’d say that I wished I could spend one day living life as though it were a frothy French romantic comedy; American musicals would be a close second. With this in mind if you blended together the sweet with the sour of both genres and poured on the soapy melodrama while grating on generous amounts of cheese, you’ll have formulated the ultimate Bollywood musical that it’s fun to get lost in, at least for two hours.
However, while I’m a casual fan, writer/director Willard Carroll is a die-hard Bollywood devotee. The filmmaker, a few years back crafted one of my favorite underrated Altman-esque ensemble pieces, Playing By Heart (which I forced everyone I knew to rent). Afterwards, he found himself fascinated by the genre after only taking in one Bollywood musical--incidentally starring Khan-- when he was in India. When he arrived back in the states, complete with a new obsession, he programmed a one-man international film festival, absorbing, analyzing and viewing an admitted “150-200” films before he set out to begin crafting his own.

And although it will never top Playing By Heart which is still one of my favorite films—ironically Heart is one so synonymous with its cast (including Connery, Jolie, Rowlands etc.) that it wasn’t until after I began researching Marigold, that I even realized the helmer of this one was one and the same. Still, Marigold is affable Saturday afternoon fare for single girls or a lightweight date movie for nights curled up on the couch, sure to find a bigger audience on cable television, as long as-- that is-- Bollywood doesn’t send you running.
Yet unlike Gurinder Chadha’s Jane Austen inspired blend of American musicals and Bollywood fare—Bride and Prejudice—Carroll wanted to pay tribute to what he liked but avoid parroting the genre altogether in what could have been an unsuccessful satire. Couple this with the fact that—as he reveals on the DVD—Ali Larter was living in his guest home and suddenly one day while observing her doing laundry, he realized he had his very own remarkable leading lady to get the job done. And likewise, he gave her a chance as a friend and supportive professional that most in the industry wouldn’t have, as he says, believing in her even more than the actress does herself.
While unfortunately it's a bit skimpy on DVD extras, the studio more than makes up for it with a fascinating behind-the-scenes thirty-minute making-of featurette on the Marigold DVD, taking film lovers further into the cinematic process of such a visually stunning work. And although therein he admits that although the process of the two stars couldn’t have been more different with Larter’s cerebral questioning and longing for rehearsal and the veteran Khan who has the ability after the bare minimum of run-throughs to just complete a complicated number flawlessly, soon they inevitably clicked. And in doing so, much like the film itself—thereby managing to meld the west and east together in a very harmlessly yet unexpectedly entertaining way.

Love and Other Disasters

Director: Alek Keshishian

In order to try and battle what Breakfast at Tiffany’s heroine Holly Golightly would call “the mean reds” of writing traditional romantic comedy, writer/director Alek Keshishian borrows heavily from not only Tiffany’s but also British romantic comedies of the past for the David Fincher and Luc Besson produced Love and Other Disasters.

For his own version of Golightly, Keshishian casts the charismatically affable, brunette beauty Brittany Murphy as “Jacks” (real name Emily Jackson) in a role that demands his actress channel both Golightly as well as the woman who personified her, the legendary Audrey Hepburn. While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, initially, Murphy’s characterization feels like an academic acting school exercise (at best) and a blithe parody (at worst) but soon enough, she wins us over. Much like the Clueless heroine Cher, played by Murphy’s costar Alicia Silverstone in director Amy Heckerling’s modern version of Jane Austen’s Emma, Murphy’s Jacks is a matchmaker gone wild.

Trying her best to keep everything running swimmingly, the perpetually rushed Jacks treats life as a never-ending party where as the “hostess” she must always ensure the guests are having the most wonderful time. And in doing so she often places the self-created dramas and romantic complications of her friends far above taking stock of things in her own chaotically fast-paced life where there’s barley enough hours in the day.

When she isn’t shagging James (Elliot Cowan), her formerly long-term, currently ex-boyfriend who just can’t seem to rebound from the fact that his love is one-sided, Jacks bonds with-- as Kathy Griffin would call-- her “main gay,” a.k.a. her endlessly supportive roommate Peter Simon (Matthew Rhys). Although aside from Peter, Jacks’ stable of friends are more irritating than winning. This is especially apparent in an extremely annoying and cringe-worthy performance by Catherine Tate as the Sylvia Plath wannabe Talullah who seems to have wandered in after being rejected from the set of either Notting Hill or Love Actually.

However, amidst juggling all of friends’ romantic subplots, Jacks is surprised to find herself enchanted by a new Argentinean colleague, Paolo (Santiago Cabrera). After confidently declaring that she has the best gaydar in the city, Jacks erroneously decides to fix her new acquaintance up with Peter. Of course, all the while the audience realizes she's mistaken Paolo’s intense looks, flirtatious compliments, and attentiveness as merely friendly when in fact Paolo has fallen in love with our flighty heroine.

If it all sounds complicated it is, and the ambitious Lebanese born, Harvard-educated filmmaker Keshishian (most famous for helming Madonna: Truth or Dare) naively tries to squeeze in far too many characters and situations into his film’s brief running time. And while at times the Tiffany’s homage feels overly forced as he unsuccessfully gives Jacks a misguided Golightly-esque catchphrase of calling cherished friends “babies,” it’s an interesting take on the original material.

In fact, it gamely acknowledges that the film version of Tiffany’s took the homosexual male character from the book and repacked him for straight audiences as a heterosexual in traditional romantic comedy fashion. Thereby, Keshishian uses his own lighthearted romp as an unlikely commentary on the decision by having loads of fun with sexual orientation misunderstandings in our contemporary era.

A beautiful and harmless trifle, Love’s carefree blend of sass and soap suds calls to mind the guilty pleasure of watching the superior CW soap Gossip Girl, but much like Gossip, it’s one of those experiences you may plead the fifth on if asked if you're a fan when in snobbish society.

Unfortunately, Keshishian’s attempt is muddled by superfluity as one feels a strong urge to reach for the “fast-forward” button whenever the obnoxious Talullah along with a few other annoying characters appear onscreen. However the chaos does serve an important purpose in augmenting Jacks and inviting viewers to identify with her a bit more than we could with Hepburn’s Golightly.

For instead of Tiffany’s diamonds, in the twenty-first century, multi-tasking is a girl’s best friend and it serves Jacks well in her self-described position as “a superficial assistant at a major fashion magazine,” namely the London branch of Vogue. Although, unlike Anne Hathaway’s discovery that in the fashion world, The Devil Wears Prada, Jacks puts her work—much like her own needs—on the back burner. And instead navigating the Golightly terrain of “rats and super-rats,” she predictably discovers that ultimately she must stop hiding behind luxury products, eccentric “artist” friends, and haute couture to let down her own guard long enough to fall in love.

Wrapping up the work utilizing the rarely beneficial screenwriting favorite "film-within-a-film" approach, much like Jacks, Keshishian called on the support of friends by serving up Gwyneth Paltrow and Orlando Bloom in an unnecessary concluding cameo that jars the whimsical tone and calls far too much attention to itself. Still, with an irresistible turn by Murphy, uniformly excellent work by Rhys, and a nice change of pace for gorgeous Heroes star Santiago Cabrera, one finds that in the end this Love is far from a total disaster.

Hollywood Dreams

Director:
Henry Jaglom

“Mmmm, I'm a star
And the audience loves me
And I love them
And they love me for loving them
And I love them for loving me
And we love each other
And that's because none of us
Got enough love in our childhoods
And that's showbiz, kid.” – “Roxie Hart” from Chicago

In her pitch perfect screen performance as Roxie Hart in the Academy Award Winning musical Chicago, Renee Zellweger played the ultimate ingénue—the quintessential star-hungry dreamer whose ambition was equally matched with her willingness to do whatever it takes to secure her fifteen minutes of fame. While in the 1920’s era Chicago, Roxie Hart’s path led her to murder, the tireless character of a young, wide-eyed hopeful girl much too eager to see her name in lights has been a favorite in Hollywood for years. Whether it’s depicted in All About Eve or in network television’s newest crop of reality programming, the recurring premise of an ambitious talent taps directly into our celebrity driven culture of a contemporary society which seems as equally dependent on gossip as we are on gasoline.

In writer/director Henry Jaglom’s latest film, we’re presented with another aspiring star, who-- and equally fitting to the archetype-- has arrived in Hollywood from small town Mason City, Iowa known to most in Tinseltown as the setting of Broadway’s The Music Man. With an encyclopedic knowledge for classic Hollywood trivia and dialogue and not above bursting into tears at an audition or fainting on cue to gain sympathy, there is something distinctly similar to Roxie Hart embodied in actress Tanna Frederick’s portrayal of Jaglom’s heroine Margie Chizek.

While we realize that she isn’t likely to resort to murder, Margie’s delusional behavior and tendency towards mania makes her an unlikely main character with whom the audience can legitimately sympathize. Even after she’s kicked out of her latest living situation for destroying the microwave, we’re always convinced (although we’re not sure she’s deserving) that she will not only land on her feet but she just may become a star and her big break appears in the form not of a knight in shining armor but in Kaz (Zack Norman) a gay film producer walking his dog in the park. Feeling sorry for Margie, he takes her to lunch only to realize he’s been hustled but he’s so convinced that her ability to lie will translate to an innate ability to perform that he sets her up in his guest home, promising he will eventually make her a star. With her other newfound benefactor, Kaz’s partner Caesar (an excellent David Proval), Margie’s Hollywood Dreams begin to come true but soon love unexpectedly enters the mix when she begins falling for the other occupant of the guest home, Robin (Justin Kirk).

Although warned that when it comes to Robin, he’s “S.B.O.” (“Strictly Boys Only”), the two seem to naturally gravitate to one another with near magnetic force as Margie starts realizing that in modern day Hollywood where the rules have been changed, Robin may only be pretending to be gay to garner more niche work. However lying about one’s orientation may not be the worst of the secrets flying throughout as every member of Kaz’s circle seems to have enough baggage to crash a jet plane.

While Robin’s storyline seems to be the most fascinating one in Jaglom’s overcrowded screenplay, especially when played to such charismatic heights by the impressive Justin Kirk, far too much time is spent fixating on Margie, who, much like Roxie Hart is fascinating enough to ensure interest for fifteen minutes of fame but ultimately not worthy of building an entire production around, despite the daring tenacity and fierce determination brought to the role by the fearless Frederick.

Priceless

Now Available to Own

A habitual check-splitter, I get embarrassed if an insistent but well-meaning man spends too much on me on dinner let alone trying to procure gifts of diamonds, hotel suites and Chanel from my date. Then again, I’m a regular woman living in the real world and not the gorgeous Audrey Hepburn like Audrey Tautou whose gold digging beauty Irene lives in the world of frothy, sun-drenched France in director Pierre Salvadori’s latest infectious hit Priceless.

With his adorable romantic comedy Apres Vous (After You), Salvadori and his co-writer Benoit Graffin gave legendary comedic director Francis Veber (The Closet, The Dinner Game) a run for his money. For Priceless, they even recruited the charming star Gad Elmaleh of Veber’s most recent film The Valet.

As Jean, Elmaleh plays a role similar to the one in The Valet, as the kind, diligent but largely unappreciated employee at a high class hotel with an inability to say “no,” who routinely fills in for others as the seaside resort’s jack of all trades, walking dogs for the ridiculous, wealthy and ridiculously wealthy and serving as the bartender.

While Jean’s life is all about hard work, Irene (Tautou) covets all things luxurious and expensive as the sexy siren hoping to marry her latest sugar daddy but in a predictable and Veber like twist of fate, ends up mistaking Jean for a high roller, tumbling into bed with him until her meal ticket finds out and kicks her to the curb.

One year later and still smitten with Irene, Jean tries to fill the gentleman’s Prada shoes by digging deep into his savings account, pension and then some to keep her in the lifestyle to which she’s accustomed. Unwilling to change her ways, Irene cleans the man out in one painfully memorable scene that finds Jean awakening to the sound of Irene ripping tags off couture each with a price that makes our economic stimulus package seem like earnings from a child’s lemonade stand. Soon, Jean himself finds he’s the target of a wealthy, older female “cougar” and becomes both Irene’s friend and rival as they try to extract as many gifts as possible from their… ahem, benefactors.

Although we all know just who will end up with whom before the final credits roll, watching the two charismatic leads and their millionaire lovers volley back and forth like pairs in doubles tennis is pure bliss. More importantly, Priceless serves as further proof of not only Salvadori’s directorial skill in the genre but more so in the wake of too many by-the-numbers American rom-coms, that much like Chanel perfume, nobody does sophisticated, irresistible romance like the French.