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Robert Downey Jr. is fantastic in all of his 60 or so seconds in this film. I think he is one of the best comic actors of all time.

Brooke Shields also does a spot-on amateur documentary film-maker shtick. I didn't even recognize her in her dreadlocks in the first half of the film. She and Downey trail a bunch of rich white high school kids half their age, trying to be one of them as they go slumming. Shields best moment is when she meets a recently married old friend on the Staten Island ferry, and you feel the disparity between Shield's refusing-to-grow-up character and her ordinary, grown-up old friend.

Downey's best moments are when he tries to pick up Mike Tyson and when he tries to pick up one of the high school students, reprising his character in Wonder Boys. It's too bad Hollywood has an insurance clause against him now, because everything he does is exceedingly knowing.

The flattest moments are the James Tolback Obligatory Sex In Central Park scene, apparently a rehearsal for an identical one in this year's "When will I be loved?", and in the contrived Typical Banker's Family Dinner with the Sullenly Rebellious Daughter While The Manservant Ladles the Soup. Please. We know Tolback has a lot of celebrity friends; they're all in his movies. I doubt he has met a single real banker in his life.

Also we are treated to the same flaw which is in Black and White, namely the highly implausible plot devices that tie all of the characters together, wherever they live in the movie and whatever their social strata. He is a big buyer of the Deus Ex Machina.

He's also a big buyer of improvisation. In the DVD he says almost all the films are improvised except the one where Claudia Schiffer impersonates what one critic called "the world's most unlikely graduate student", and another called "a surprisingly believable turn as a faithless brainiac". Whatever. She looks hot for the most part except towards the end where they're one outdoor shot in a riverside park where her lips just look too big and she looks like a squeaky and insufficiently made-up skinny yin-yang. What can you do. Her funniest moment was the split second sitting next to and conversing with Robert Downey Jr. when he turns to compare perfume notes with the young man sitting next to him, and she figures out she's no longer the center of attention and suddenly gets up and walks away. Her least likely moment is when she is about to have sex in a bathroom with her boyfriend's best friend. Not that the premise is unlikely: She is just too Teutonic and awkward beneath all that prettiness to look like she's about to tongue-wrestle with a big sweaty gangster. (Much more believable is the news story about her I read the other day where she is applying to private schools for her unborn child.)

Tolback cast himself as Tolback pretty much, as usual. If you're the director, why not throw yourself a cameo? It's just a stone's throw from there to writing in a sex scene with the lead actress, but if he did that he'd have to write himself a lead part and then he'd be Vincent Gallo, but he's not, he's more of a voyeur; enough to write those Central Park scenes and shoot them in closeup with full improvisatory rein given to the actors. Let them really get into the moment, keep the cameras rolling.

Am I boring you with this review? Is it running on a little long? Does it seem a little disconnected?

If you think this is bad, go see the movie.

This film opens with very clichéd portrayal of Stinky Olde Englande among the lower classes. Then we have Reese Witherspoon as the Poor Orphan Girl and then she very quickly gets schooled and finds herself job-hopping like any modern Wall Streeter from one good job to the next better one. Along the way she flirts with her employers and gets involved with some of them, and then she gets really involved and has a baby and a war happens and some people die (but none that we really care about) and some people live to see a brighter day (those that we are supposed to care about). Reese towards the end of the film sees her fate reversed once again while she is slumming with some funny-looking Germans, but then like the Fairy Godmother that she plays throughout this film, she manages to perform yet another miracle, like a slightly slutty Mary Poppins.

And somewhere in the middle she does a Britney Spears/Madonna-style dance number in nearly-modern costumes that seems totally out of place in Victorian England and totally breaks the mood.

I gotta say, I didn't buy it, and I kept wanting to buy it, because the film is visually pleasant enough and everybody in the cast is pleasant enough, but still, I just couldn't get into it.

Not my cup of tea, I guess, but other people seem to like it, so that's OK.

I saw the David Mamet play "When will I be loved?" with Neve Campbell today.

It appeared on the multiplex's digitized list of films as "I be loved" so it was hard to find at first.

Much has been made of Neve dropping her no-nudity clause to do some soft-core shower soap-up hose-the-button scenes at the beginning and end of the film, and a soft-core press-me-against-the-window-and-take-my-clothes-off encounter with the creamy blonde chick from American Pie 2 (Joelle Carter).

Neve in her shower scenes reveals herself to have the normal and healthy-looking body that one would expect of a Canadian cheerleader in the buff. Without clothes she looks like any normal college girl (well really she's 31, which she doesn't look -- so she's a 31 year old with the body of a normal college girl). Only when she straps on the high heels and undergarments, of which she has an ample variety in this film, does she take on the persona of the femme fatale.

She seems quite comfortable and self-entitled ensconced in a $5 million apartment in the Archive Building on Charles Street overlooking the Hudson River. Her parent's ability to sustain this largesse is not fully explained or justified, but people do live in that building, and somebody made this movie out of imaginations based on their own personal experiences, so no doubt there are hot girls living in expensive apartments in Manhattan.

What is a little unlikely is her ability to switch flawlessly between college-girl ditziness when speaking on the phone with her parents and the psychotic ruthlessness she displays towards her playmates. Sure, there are mean girls out there like that, but usually they live in more modest surroundings. Rich people are usually a bit more protected and socialize in smaller circles. So Frederick Weller's hustler is a very plausible creation, but one wonders if the milieu and the circumstances and the reach that she has aren't slightly implausible.

Well, of course, the whole thing is implausible, it's a movie. But people are so mean to each other in this movie, and while you're watching it, the movie convinces you that this is how people really are. So, going on the false premise that people are really like this, one then has to buy the environmental trappings of the movie, at which point my suspension of disbelief falls apart a little bit.

Not that rich people don't exist and that rich people don't entertain themselves by associating with hustlers. I just didn't buy the reach of the whole combination -- a bit too much deus ex machina.

Neve's character in this movie does seem like someone I would like to hang out with, though, on the assumption that the vindictiveness of her behavior belies an underlying moral sense. On the other hand, she could just be a complete psychopath, a conclusion which is suggested by the last frame of the movie.

I was favorably impressed. I love French bande dessineé, and this was the best (only?) cinematic impression I have seen of the feel of a good bande dessineé.

Plot-wise it was thin, more like a radio play with the actors reading their lines and Gwyneth simpering her way through the whole thing (no wait, once she pouted, maybe twice). But it was all very true to itself and I rather enjoyed it.

Plus, when I left the theater, being in Manhattan, most of the buildings around me had exactly the look of the buildings in the film (in Union Square area, most being built in the 30's).

I was impressed with the movie as an art piece.

I thought he might be pretentious but when he spoke he came off as being a very funny and down-to-earth guy, who happened to be an artist with a film he cared about. He said "Everybody calls me a lazy pretender but I spent all my money and worked 20-hour days for 3 years in a row to make this film.

How lazy is that?"

After the movie he showed Ebert's initial bashing of the film. He and Ebert have since met and he took half an hour off the Cannes version, including a suicide ending, and people (including Ebert) like the film better now -- as an art piece. Gallo said that he is not trying to be an artist as a filmmaker, rather, he understands that the core of cinema is to be entertaining -- hence the cuts. As an entertainer he is trying to tell a story, if he gets it just right, at least one person will be entertained by the story, and then he is done.

He really seemed like an accessible, funny, down-to-earth guy. His screen persona is a projection of his inner demons, but I think he is very much in control of that projection, and doesn't let it infect is day-to-day interactions with people. (At least publicly with people he doesn't know; I don't know what it was like for Chloe Sevigny to be his girlfriend.)

The BJ scene was integral to the film. Sevigny used to be his girlfriend, so it wasn't like he hadn't been there before and was using his director's position to get some action. I've seen worse on the Internet, and nobody makes a big deal about that.

Saw it at a Paramount screening.

Great when she's picking up guys and hitting the sack.

Samuel L. Jackson does a reprise of his role in "Unbreakable". This gives the movie an overall comic-book feel.

She is basically doing a Gina Gershon impression the whole time and I kept expecting her to pick up a chick.

The guys she does pick up, all lined up, seem like a bunch of sniveling schmucks and not worthy of her supposedly steely and together sexual personality.

She's supposed to be really smart but every night she keeps drinking the same poisoned wine.

Fairly good production values and music (expect this from a Hollywood movie). Started out expecting a horror movie (didn't know the plot), pleasantly surprised when it turned into a crime drama with a hot babe, then disappointed when it got repetitive and unbelievable.

See it for yourself and you'll see what I mean.

Overall I'd give it a C+. Better than Gwyneth Paltrow's stewardess movie, not as good as the average Columbo episode (if you take out the hot bedroom scenes.)

This is possibly the most boring Gwyneth film I've ever seen.

It felt like a high-school play. Mike Myers made a face with the sideways eyeball-insert. Then he made it again. Then he made it again.

Gwyneth pouted. She was sad. Then she was happy. She smiled! Then she was sad again. Poor Gwyneth.

Candice got a part in a movie! Isn't that great!

The box at the video store said: "Ebert & Roper: Two thumbs up!"

What were they smoking?

Also, I couldn't tell whether the thing was supposed to be set in the early 60's or the early 80's or the early 90's or what. The only clue as to the intended time period was that the cars were all 2002 models or so. Beyond that, the characters and set decor didn't quite match any historical period in recent memory.

Other than that it was good, go pull it out of the bargain basement bin and enjoy it on a Sunday night when all the good bars aren't happening!

I can imagine the party where some Club Med executives and a ski resort oner decided to try their hand at the movie business with this one. "Let's see, if we give them free ski passes and hotel rooms for a week, and promise to film them doing whatever they damn well please, they'll work for nothing and we'll get a whole famous movie out of it. And in 20 years, people will see it in the $2 bin of their local video store, and they'll want to go skiing here and see if people are really still wearing corduroy jackets and ties to the bar and bell-bottom ski pants on the slopes."

A notable addition to your collection if you are a Jim Carrey or Jean-Claude Killy fan or a fashion historian. Or if you and your friends are really stoned at 3AM on a Sunday morning and want to watch something aimless, listless, and beyond self-parody.

And very interesting from a Carrey point of view, because what he does here at approximately age 20 is exactly what he's done in every movie he's been in since then.

Also, is Allen Thicke somebody? Because he appeared to get his start in this one.

Also note the big hair and fashion shades on the female singers, and the absence of chord variations in the first female number.

And check out the Country&Western dude.

And boy those ski racers are so much fun to be around, and not at all narcissistic.

If you liked this one, see also Professor Bunkersplaten in "World's Greatest Skiing Bloopers", also available in the bargain bin of your local video store, or at the 25 cent sale at your public library.

I saw this yesterday at a GenArt screening in New York.

William Macy does a great William Macy.

Alec Baldwin does a great Alec Baldwin. A fair amount of scenery chewing, but that's Alec Baldwin.

I liked the Sharon Stone lookalike, Maria Bello, who did a pretty good Elizabeth/Shue Leaving Las Vegas impersonation of still hot but rough around the edges waitress/hooker with a heart of gold.

Being 44 this point and on the lookout for just such a waitress, I was a big fan of the sex scenes with William Macy and the waitress, and I'd be happy if the whole film was just about that.

Ron Livingston did his bit from Swingers pretty well.

All in all, I would give the casting director an A+.

The screenwriter, however, varies from C- to D, and the whole thing ends up feeling a bit like a high school play done mostly by the really promising students.

But what the hell, if you like Vegas, give it a look, if only to find out what a Little Joey looks like in the flesh!

The problem with spy shows whose scripts appear to have been authored by Government technical writers is that they come off a bit wooden. As in real life, I guess that if you actually worked for a spy agency, your real working day wouldn't be all that thrilling and the people you worked with wouldn't be all that different from people anywhere.

But it doesn't make for good TV.

I watched one episode of MI-5 and it reminded me in tone a lot of another Discovery Channel series, "Covert Action", about the CIA.

Again, I guess the real details of any job can be quite boring, so maybe the only way to inject drama into a series about a job is to focus on the characters and in the micro-universe of people's personalities, find some drama.

But shows like MI-5 and Covert Action are really vehicles to convey scenarios. They are like mini war-games. As an analogy: If you want to fly, you have to take flying lessons. So if you wanted to spy, you would look at spy-game scenarios. But there is no real drama in those scenarios, only the prospect of action and reaction.

Also, frankly, in the episode I watched, the MI-5 officers sat cluelessly in a van listening to their guy get beaten up and then thrown out a window. And then there was a lot of nonsense about them not being able to go in and trash the place after that happened. I just don't buy it, and this attempt at portraying "reality" just didn't seem real to me, and it made the rest of the show seem contrived. Also their collection of Muslim fanatics seemed unbelievable, unmotivated, and un-ethnic. I think if you took the paint off of the main bad guys you'd find a white guy from Surrey trying on his best Afghani accent. Also there was a jumble of ethnicities that I didn't quite buy: Like sticks with like and there was an infiltration sub-plot that seemed too easy and too contrived. These people know each other, you can't just walk in, even if you're from some country that speaks the same language.

Overall I'd give it a C- for realism and a D- for dramatic flair.

Audrey Tatou does a pretty good job as a Movie Cute Turkish Maid, given how type-castable she was as a Movie Cute French Gamine in Amelie.

The lead, playing a porter/doctor, is sincere and believable.

The main plot device is a little hard to believe. Assuming that there is a trade in people selling their organs, which I don't really buy, I don't think it would really be carried out in a luxury hotel. (Or maybe a 3-star hotel, I think a 5-star hotel would have a 24-hour kitchen, but I wouldn't know, never having stayed overnight in London.)

And I would definitely go out with the hooker if she wasn't really a hooker, she is HOT. Audrey Tatou is, mmm, hot, but you don't want to get too close to her because she's liable to bite it off, and she's pining after the one unavailable man in the movie and always being taken ruthlessly advantage of by the available men, all because she wants to visit Manhattan, which, believe me, is an experience not really worth donating a kidney for.

Well, so anyway, the critics love it, go see it if you want, but overall I found it rather uncomfortable for entertainment and rather too entertaining to take seriously.

I saw this movie at a Gen Art screening in New York and loved it. It is basically a first-time work for this director who shows impressive maturity and sensitivity for someone in his late 20's (and impressive organizational ability to pull it off).

The best way to describe it is as a portrait of aging. It is not really judgemental, it is affectionate. Some reviewers thought he was criticizing the nursing home it was set in; I don't. It's not really One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The film's main protagonist (a slacker who smokes weed on the way to work but bonds well with the old people), probably would get fired in real life, and probably nobody but him would get too upset about it. (I have a friend in real life who is a carbon copy of the main character, and in mid-life has settled into a low-paying job as a janitor in a small art museum, where people understand his limitations but accept him for who he is.) So all in all I found the film to be extremely realistic.

What got to me were the frequent closeups of hands, as an old woman attempted to sew or knit or play cards and was having difficulty doing many of the things we take for granted. Really the film is about those quiet little difficulties and what life is like when you're pretty old and almost done. This is very sad and the film brought out the sadness in me. But it is part of life and I think watching this film puts it on the table and makes it easier to accept that people you love do grow old and lose their capacities and eventually die. That's just the way it is!

I complemented the director at the Q&A afterwards. I wanted to buy a copy to show friends and family but they're still trying to get regular distribution. My guess is you might see it on A&E some day but it probably won't get much play other than that and won't make it to video, so I hope they will get around to self-distributing it at some point. (And now that this is out of his system, I'll be curious to see what the second act is for the writer/director, or whether this will be a one-hit wonder for him.)

This movie lays out the base case of how young Eastern European women are lured into sexual slavery in other countries. It is a plausible, methodical and correct depiction of what happens. And it happens everywhere, and not just to Eastern European women, though they seem to be a major exporter at the current time.

And it's a problem most people laugh at, and it's not always so grim for the women who get sucked in. They do get to emigrate, a lot of them are basically whores to begin with, and some of them end up out of the business and with visas, cars and families in their newly adopted countries. But not without selling their youth and not without getting screwed relentlessly by a lot of bad guys for a long time.

It's not a pretty picture, and it's not a subject most people care about, and it happens all the time everywhere right under our noses. But that's not the fault of this movie. I thought the movie was great and right on. A lot of reviewers didn't like the movie because it was too obvious, but really, with the exception of the Lizzie Borden movie Working Girls (no, not the Melanie Griffith movie), how many movies which are not documentaries really take a plain head-on view of prostitution with the rosy colored glasses taken off (and no, I'm not talking Pretty Woman and I'm not talking Showgirls either). This is a good movie, and it really does the subject justice. It is a little bit polemic, but it is not pandering or prurient.

(Sorry, I couldn't avoid the alliteration: it sought me out!)

The depiction of Sweden is not to be missed, by the way, for those of you who think of the country as a smoked-fish and meatballs paradise filled with beautiful, attractive and available blondes. You definitely get a different side of town when you see this movie.

So go see it, it's a good one! (But only if you really care about this subject.)

This is sort of a paint-by-numbers comedy/drama (spoiler: it gets a little dark at the end) about a 20-year-old Yeshiva student who can't stop whacking off to girly magazines and is sent out of town by his pervy religion professor to go sleep with a Russian hooker, on the theory that if he had sex with a hot young prostitute once, that would cause him to forget all about sex and then he could get back to studying the Bible and maybe get in the proper mindset for his upcoming arranged marriage.

Of course, he falls in love with a Russian stripper who w***s him once for a fee and then lets him follow her around while they mostly do nothing and she worries about her visa. He meets another one of her customers, a blustery bar owner named Mike (not Mike of Mike's Hard Lemonade, Mike with the quasi-divey cutesy bar for self-styled eccentric scruffy characters in downtown Jerusalem), who gives him a job washing glasses after they guzzle a bottle of Wild Turkey on the beach and toast their memories of the Russian hooker. Who then proceeds to hang around both of them and some other stock characters (the Arab merchant, the two puking old guys, the Russian mobster and so on).

I found it all a bit contrived except that I know a bar owner who is just as blustery and fake and full of it as the Mike in the movie, so I know that such bars and such bar owners exist. And I know young yeshiva students facing arranged marriages who've probably been in a strip joint (more than) once or twice. So it all hangs together. The confluence of all the characters that meet and their seeming ability to relate to and communicate with each other....I don't know if these people would really get together, that they would have that much to say to each other, and that the outcome would be as dramatic as that portrayed. (But we have seen some pretty dramatic and unlikely things in New York, coming from people we have no real beef with, so you never know.)

I was curious about the prostitution angle, whether that was a focus of the movie or just part of the decor. The screening I was at was in a commercial theater in the East Village. Completely by chance, the cast, director and distributor were there, and the distributor organized a Q&A in the lobby of the theater. (Charming but desperate attempt to generate word-of-mouth for a film that was completed in 2000 but which couldn't be shown until now because of people's supposed "sensitivities"; apparently it got little to no play in Israel itself, though it was produced there.) And there were one or two stock Israeli viewer types in the small crowd that gathered, to object to the portrayal of Israel. But other than that a fairly tame Q&A. After the Q&A I asked the director what he thought about the prostitution situation in Jerusalem. He said, rather proudly, that Jerusalem was "the biggest whorehouse in the Middle East", but that the trade had declined with the decline in fortune of dot-com companies. (Hopefully not due to any decline in the fortunes of imdb.com!) Anyhoo, from his comment, I got the impression that the whole sex trade and human trafficking/slavery thing was not his issue. It was just a plot device. Which left me wondering what his main thrust was, because really, the whole thing seemed kind of muddled.

But if you don't have a bulletproof vest but still want to see what Israel looks like, this movie is a good place to start, so go see it!

Anna Mouglalis is HOT. And she's the main character. So why doesn't her name appear on the DVD box along with Jacques Dutronc and Isabelle Huppert? Don't they have enough already?

I've seen other pictures of her on the Net and she doesn't look exactly like Liv Tyler, but in this movie, the way her hair is done and her lipstick applied, they could be twins separated at birth.

Oh, and what about the movie?

Well, I saw it with four other people. In keeping with the theme of the movie, which has a lot to do with hot chocolate and getting a good night's sleep, two of the four fell asleep after the first twenty minutes or so. The other person and I (both Francophiles, and I now a convinced Mouglalis-o-phile), managed to watch the whole thing, which wasn't easy, because, well....the acting kind of sucked, the people were all boring and unlikable, and the plot was salvaged from the reject bins behind the office where they write Murder, She Wrote, episodes of Columbo, and those Masterpiece Theater episodes set in the 1920's. Boring boring boring. And contrived. And unbelievable. Too many coincidences, and once you see the movie, you'll find it hard to believe that main character A married main character B, and you'll find it hard to believe that main character A, a driven over-achiever who surely must be exhausted with all the work he does, would have troubles sleeping and would have such little sex drive that he would want to get into a permanent hookup with main character B, whom he's been with before and didn't like the first time. That is, there is not enough shown about his character to make these choices even remotely plausible.

But to know who A and B are, you'll have to go see the movie. So go see it, and have a good time!

I saw this movie when I was 10, in 1970, with my older sister who was an authentic hippy back in the day (and still is). Sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, and death. Pretty heavy stuff for a 10-year-old. I'll never forget this movie, the title song "Hey Joe, don't it make you want to go to war once more?", or be able to look at Peter Boyle in any other light other than the deranged and homicidal factory worker and parent that he plays in this movie. The pivotal incident in the movie is fresh and ingrained in my memory and will be so forever, as is the penultimate moment as Joe and the executive he bonds with begin to understand the scope of their handiwork.

This is a very powerful movie, and I would recommend it (along with a healthy dose of Fritz the Cat comic books, a tie-dyed shirt, some incense, and some rose-colored multi-faceted octagonal glasses), to anybody who wants to connect with the 60's. This is the real deal.

So go see it, and enjoy!

I saw this movie when I was 10, in a double-header with Harold and Maude, at the Central Square Cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the summer of 1970.

This is one of those 60's movies, along with Joe, Harold and Maude, Georgy Girl and the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, that really define the times for me.

The plot is sort of a French WWI version of "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest", without Big Nurse. There is a mental asylum. The war is on. The staff flees. The inmates take over the asylum. Being Movie Mental Patients, they don 18th Century costumes and act cute all over the place and reveal their inner beauty and so forth until the place gets recaptured by the American or the British Army or something and the fun ends and the inmates go back to their rooms. Or something like that. That is as much as I remember from 34 years ago, give me a break!

I suggest you organize a "Real 60's night", and screen all of the above films. Really. Don't forget the 60's, they were cute as hell. So go see it, and enjoy!

This is the definitive mod '60s movie. 'Nuff said.

And if you ever wondered who Lynn Redgrave was (some relation to Vanessa Redgrave), well: this is a good place to start. (Not to mention those other guys, Alan Bates and James Mason, who also happen to be in this movie.)

Georgy is a cute fast girl who gets knocked up by one guy and is loved by another guy. Don't worry about the plot. It's the mood, the atmosphere, the times. This is early Swinging London, and it's all about that.

See also for example The Prisoner and The Avengers for a campier version of those days (and for a campier look back at this campier version, the Austin Powers movies).

But if Austin Powers is the Hudson River, then Georgy Girl is the little spring at the top of the mountain that eventually feeds into the mountain river that feeds into the reservoir that feeds into the tributary that feeds into the Hudson River. This movie is the real deal, where it all started.

So go see it, and enjoy!

Excluding the irrelevant plot device of making Ben and JLo into mobsters, this is a reasonably pleasant movie about boy-meets-girl and about brotherhood or parenting depending on your take on the relationship between the couple (Ben and JLo) and the Cute Movie Retard.

The dialogue about sexual and interpersonal relationships is actually quite above average. The mainstream gay&lesbian critics who complain about Ben converting yet another lesbian are prudish, politically correct bores. In fact the movie's central point about sexuality is that there is really a spectrum, not just two extremes, and a lot of the more strident critics might be less upset if they could understand this message, but they don't.

Christoper Walken also does what he does best for a few minutes, which is always enjoyable, and Al Pacino does what he does best for a few minutes.

So if you excuse the flat soundtrack and the irrelevant plot superstructure, this movie is worth watching, if only to get in the face of everybody who hates it so much.

I saw this movie at the GenArt Film Festival 8 April 2003. As I watched the movie I kept wanting to like it. For one thing it is indeed an extremely realistic portrayal of a certain class of people. And it was introduced by the GenArt film programmer as being "young and hip -- very representative of our audience". And yet...for two hours we are treated to a portrait of a bunch of shallow, miserable, unhappy, selfish, clueless people with apparently no work responsibilities and no families and no relationships outside of their whining, mewling, sullen, mopey complaints about each other interspersed with bouts of apparently pleasureless intercourse. 45 minutes of the college version of this followed by 45 minutes of the soulless successful yuppie version of this. They cried, they screwed, they lied. They hardly ever laughed and it was a real strain near the end to watch them trying their damndest to have fun with a little karaoke. In the end, while I appreciated the skillful realism of the portrait, I couldn't get over the fact that I just wouldn't care about these people in real life. I made this comment in the Q&A afterwards and the director was intolerant. A few people afterwards came up and agreed with me. Also most of the reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes had the same impression. Still, it is valuable as a detailed anatomy of the insipid.