Cinema_Strikes’s review published on Letterboxd:
70mm
A minor work, but very enjoyable with terrific performances. It’s shaggy as hell and incredibly flawed - all the stuff with the jackass owner of the Japanese restaurant should have come right out, the joke isn’t funny and the racist caricature is jarring as hell, it took me out of the movie for almost 10 minutes trying to understand why a man would talk to his wife that way, and the gag wasn’t suitably explained until much later. And so much time is allotted to fun but scene-stealing cameos by folks like Bradley Cooper and Harriet Sansom Harris (plus the whole city council plotline).
But I love the evocation of a time and a place, the hideous shirts and haircuts, the use of real-looking actors instead of the usual pretty faces, the grungy, lived-in vibe.
[Edited: oh, the mom was the f'in Waitress! No wonder she looked so familiar!]
PTA films ranked here.
[Alamo Season Pass]
