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Indie Flix
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times,
published October 25, 2001
Been there, done that better
My First Mister (R) (105 min.) -- Remember those Hollywood entertainments that purported to "tell it like it is" regarding the needs of contemporary teens? Leelee Sobieski, the talented actor from Joy Ride and The Glass House, somehow got suckered into My First Mister, a similarly sappy melodrama that makes viewers feel embarrassed for everyone involved.
Sobieski does what she can with the role of Jen, a goth kid defined by multiple piercings, heavy black eyeliner, a copy of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, bedroom candles galore and brooding metal on the stereo. But hey, she's a creative doom-and-gloom teenybopper, constantly writing her own eulogies and looking at the world through the wrong end of cute little binoculars.
Life with Jen's moronic mother (Carol Kane) and oblivious stepfather (Michael McKean) is a real bore. Jen cruises the local mall during her wasted free time, deciding to pursue a career at an upscale men's clothing store. The attraction? A lonely guy's lonely guy, a quiet, 49-year-old store manager (Albert Brooks) set in his ways and apparently burned out on anything resembling genuine emotional contact.
There are lessons to be learned, and first-time director Christine Lahti makes it her duty to underline, underscore and drive home every truth from Jen's so-called life. The resemblance of this film to the vastly more appealing and accomplished Ghost World may be only coincidental. Anyone seeking a funny, insightful examination of such a May-October relationship is advised to skip Lahti's debut in favor of the latter.
Opens Friday at Channelside Cinemas. C+
-- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic
Slight twist can't save old story
All Over the Guy (R) (96 min.) -- Eli (Dan Bucatinsky) is a Los Angeles cops reporter for a West Hollywood newspaper. Tom (Richard Ruccolo) is a physical education teacher who carouses too much. They don't appear to be made for each other, but eventual lovers in romantic comedies seldom do at first. A first date is a disaster, a reunion inevitable due to the film's running time.
Washington Post film critic Loren King wrote: "What's most winning about All Over the Guy is that Eli's and Tom's conflicts come from life struggles such as alcoholism, dysfunctional parents, meddling friends, loneliness and pressures to look good, all of which co-exist with their homosexuality. They are integrated characters, more complex than such people would be in a typical Hollywood film. . . .
"But the central boy-meets-boy story is full of the romantic comedy conventions that have turned the genre stale, from meeting cute to middle-of-the-night missteps that end with the police at the door to a finale that includes a wedding and a sunset. Just because it happens to be two guys in the frame instead of Julia Roberts and Dermot Mulroney (whose My Best Friend's Wedding this film resembles) doesn't give All Over the Guy any more edge or give this romance any more novelty or spark."
Opens Friday at Tampa Theatre.
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