Four of Them

-Watching River Phoenix movies makes me sad, okay? He was a, like, crazy-good actor, he was in a Gus Van Sant movie, he was mini Harrison Ford (ahem), he was in Stand By Me, quite possibly the corniest, most awesome movie of the eighties (in that kids-rule genre people ate up). Let's get that shit out of the way.

-It involves what might possibly an offensive stereotype--Kevin Klein with an obnoxious, if funny, "meat-a balls and spa-ghett-i!" Italian accent, working at a pizza parlor, a promiscuous lova and extremely bad Catholic--but, as I am either Jewish or Irish (depending on who you ask), I don't really care.

-It would appear Keanu Reeves has finally found his nook. Good for you, son.

-Go. William. Hurt.

-Why isn't Tracey Ullman acting more? She's so great in this, funny and honest and mad and sad and one of the few characters who aren't caricatures. Damn.

-Seriously, everyone here is a stereotype of something. The New Age hippie guy, the bumbling junkies, the traditional, foreign mother who pisses about the kids of today, the aforementioned Italian lothario. And yet, it works, somehow. It's not winning any awards, but it's a harmless, stranger-than-fiction, endearing, sometimes laugh-out-loud mini-caper. Sure, it spends a long time hm-hawing over the build up--our guy Joey cheats on his wife a lot, which takes up the pre-title scene, he loves his kids and wife, blah, blah, he's just a man!, but once things get going--as Rosalie and her mother Nadja try to hire some guy to beat Joey to death on his way home from another tryst, then try rigging his car, then try poisoning his food, then try shooting him, as they pull more and more people into it--the mind can't help but boggle at the 'Based on a True Story' sticker on the DVD.

-Carry on.