Low-budget item about three would-be stars living together in a section of Los Angeles: Susan Dey is the single mother and acting-hopeful who ends up delivering Strip-o-Grams, Thomas Hulce writes songs and delivers pizzas and Michael Bowman hopes to be a celebrity bodybuilder. The set-up sounds overly precious--though it certainly doesn't play that way, thanks to sharp, acute writing and savvy directing. Of the ensemble, it's Susan Dey who surprises with a fully-dimensional performance; cynical, wise, exhausted, and yet still clinging to hope, Dey's first assignment (stripping at a small party) is excruciating to watch (for all the right reasons), making her eventual accomplishment at this profession almost joyous to behold. This is one of the few films I've ever seen to visually equate self-confidence with success, and the tangled relationships between the roommates is well-realized, wistful, funny and touching. *** from ****
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smatysia14 March 2002A cute film. Echo Park is apparently a fairly seedy district of Los Angeles. Susan Dey plays a bartender who wants to be an actress (unheard of in L.A., huh?) and gets a job doing Strip-o-grams. The pathetic thing is, she considers this her big break. She takes in a roommate, Tom Hulce, who delivers pizzas for a living. He immediately falls for her, but she is enamored of a neighbor, an Austrian who spends all his time pumping iron. He is convinced that he will be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger, and is completely oblivious to how miraculous it is that there is one Arnold, and hardly a big market for another. Anyway, Hulce's character spends much of the film suffering that terrible pain of loving someone, but seeing her throw herself at someone inferior. I had never heard of this film, but I liked it fairly well. Cassandra Peterson and Cheech Marin have small roles, also. Grade: B
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bladelawless15 November 2007Echo Park is a bizarre and meandering film that continually defies expectations. It is entertaining in its flaunting of conventionality yet ultimately unsatisfying in its dramatic and its comedic aspects. The love triangle never builds any poignancy or any real interest, even, while the laughs come only sporadically. What are we to make of the opening and closing sequences involving the bodybuilder's father? Does the alpine frolic at the end suggest that the Ahnult wannabe has successfully rewritten his past? Has his friendship with Tom Hulce and Susan Dey allowed him to re-conceptualize his origins, transforming the nightmare of blood and sausages into a "Sound of Music" dreamscape?
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This movie was recommended to me by a person who I believe has great taste in movies. But I have to admit that I totally missed the mark on this one. I lived in LA for 12 years and I enjoyed seeing some of it again, but that is about the only redeeming value I got out of the movie. The opening and closing sequences seemed totally bizarre and out of place. I thought the acting was sub par and where the story was going was totally predictable until the jump cut to the scene at the end where everyone was suddenly running through the Alps like the opening sequence to the Sound of Music. This was billed as a comedy. I don't think I laughed out loud once though it had some mildly humorous moments. I could have skipped this one easily.
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runnerludd17 September 2006I liked this movie a lot. Kind of ad and depressing.
A single mother working hard in LA just to make i work. I watched it when I was about 15,
I don't remember if she used drugs in the movie or not maybe. Well it show different side the glamors Hollywood and Beverley hills anyway.
At that time there were not a lot of movies on Swedish television. around 1988.
I hope it will appear an a swedixh channel again some tine.
Susan Dey who to me is Grace Van Owen in LA Law and nobody else make a good performance in this movie. I recommend it. -
mjneu5915 November 2010The title takes its name from that run-down, Bohemian quarter of Los Angeles, where (among other inhabitants) a pizza delivery boy dreams of publishing poetry, a single mother works nightly as a strip-o-gram dancer while awaiting her big career break as an actress, and a naive bodybuilder lands a role in a cheap deodorant commercial, setting his alarm for 3:00 a.m. to see his (small) screen debut. It's a neighborhood of considerable charm and eccentricity, but too bad the same can't always be said of the film, which has its moments but (in retrospect) all too often resembles an offbeat, low-rent plagiarism of Neil Simon. Michael Ventura's script is curiously transparent from a writer (in the LA Weekly, at the time) of opaque film criticism; the only way his scenario could be more obvious would have been to make the Tom Hulce character an aspiring screenwriter instead of just a closet poet.
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BrainyBlonde18 February 2003Excellent film, great cast and didn't anyone notice the pictures that were put in there on purpose (yet done in a subtle way) Like the photos of "Elvira" on the wall in the apartment (when the actress who played Elvira was also in the film sans the black wig.... Or when Tom Hulce and the boy went to deliver the pizza and Hulce stopped briefly to pause to look at the photo of Wolfgang Amadeus on the wall of the house? (Hulce was nominated for an academy award for his depiction of Amadeus two years earlier before this film)
I really thought the writing was superb too and ...God it even made me miss Los Angeles!
I give this film a 9 out of 10. I hadn't seen it since my teens when it came out and was so glad to get to see it again on cable.
I highly recommend it...an intelligent well directed pic for all. -
jbdean11 February 1999"We're all just delivering pizza ... " [Jonathan]*
Everyone has dreams ... but reality makes us have to live the 'normal life' while waiting for our dreams to come true. That's the way it is in Echo Park, California for three mismatched people that come together and form a bond of friendship that none of them ever expected!
A Pizza Man who's really a song writer. A Waitress that's really an actress. A Body Builder that's really the next Arnold Schwarzenegger.
In Echo Park ... dreams can come true!
===========> *TOM HULCE as Jonathan ... shows the tenderness of this endearing character. And we also get to hear some of his beautiful voice as he sings, pieces, of the song he's working on! (A definite added bonus.) -
tom_jones23 October 2002That's what Susan Dey asks Tom Hulce, a pizza delivery man with ambitions of being a musician. He's good at it, but music won't pay the rent. So her question is really philosophical: he delivers pizzas, but his heart is in his music. So..."What do you REALLY do?" By itself, this film is barely a "C" movie. The only reason I choose to critique it is that it addresses the plight of so many wannabe actors, writers, musicians, artists, whomever, in LA. For all of what we hear on "Entertainment Tonight" or other shows focussing on stars, most of us "in" the entertainment business are doing something else for a living while dreaming of that lucky break. When Tom Hulce asks Susan Dey if she is an actress, she answers, "I TRY to act. I WANT to. I go to classes, but does that make me an actress? If it doesn't, then no, I'm not." The Tom Hulce character delivers pizza for a living while he dotes on the Susan Dey character, who throws herself at a dim bodybuilder who dreams of being the next Schwarzenegger. And in the meantime, they are all living in Echo Park, a seedy suburb in LA just outside of Hollywood. The whole film has an unfinished look to it, as though they had a limited budget and ran out of money just before they could wrap things up. And it has that cheap, pop-80's synthesizer music in the background, very common for that time frame. For entertainment, you can do a whole lot better than this. But if you plan to join us here in LA, this movie should be required viewing. Chances are that the lives these characters lead will be the life YOU lead if you decide to move to LA. There'll be an apartment for you to rent in Echo Park. 3 out of 10.
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kommanderprix6 January 2004..is written in this film. between the plot of struggling with the American dream, where at the end friendship wins the day and the 80th flair, including soundtrack and a cheap dim TV-footage, a midget art piece can be found. German synchronous version is the icing on the cake! enjoy!
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wyteboy2327 November 2004One of the most ridiculously written and directed movies you will ever see. Possibly entertaining to some because of it's absurdity, particularly the ludicrous ending sequence. The character's have all the depth of porn characters, making you wonder if the writer/director have ever even met the sort of people they make caricatures of. May possibly have been written by someone like Bob Dole. Particularly entertaining is the wardrobe. The bodybuilder who wears cowboy boots outside of his jeans. The slick agent who wears sunglasses over his acne indoors. You know what you're dealing with immediately in the scene where Tom Hulce brings in that 4" pizza, pulls a cutter out of his pocket, and starts slicing it up in the kitchen. Good Lord.