Word: script
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...solid gags in Frank Oz's deft direction of Paul Rudnick's pointed script, the biggest one is that it's not just Howard who seems gay. So do the teachers, the town barber, Howard's stolid brother. And what exactly is the gay style in a time when bullying machismo rules on the street and on the screen? It is to be pleasant, considerate, gently witty--virtues once celebrated in American life and Hollywood comedies...
...script itself is often as wobbly as the short-term ententes formed among the characters. Screenwriter Laura Jones, who so bravely and audaciously recontextualized last winter's Portrait of a Lady, shows a disappointing, almost slavish devotion to Smiley's prose. In fact, the movie's first half-hour plays like a book on tape, with transparent thumbnail characterizations ("I guess you remember that Rose always says what she thinks") and redundant observations ("We all understood that something important had just happened...
...Music Box." One thing an audience should not feel in a drama this malignant is a niggling deja vu. Leigh, for once, drops the mannerisms, but her brisk performance is essentially a protracted walk-on. The husbands and other secondary characters barely register, serving a structural purpose in Jones' script that affords them little vitality...
...some cases the actors surpass their own script and achieve the seemingly impossible task of carrying 'Shlemiel' to a higher plane. Benjamin Evett who plays the mischievous Chaim Rascal as well as the Chelmish sage Dopey Pretzel, when not stealing Shlemiel's latkas is doing the same with the stage. Comfortable and at ease with the silliness with the lyrics, he sings with the glee of a Puck and the energy to match the Klezmer Band's clarinet. Also exceptional are the buffoon Gronam Ox and his wife Yenta Pesha (Marilyn Sokol). Shlemiel himself (Will LeBow) is shlemiely enough...
Carey's lushly romantic songs, many of which she wrote, including Fantasy and Dreamlover, have always encouraged such extravagant imaginings. But in this case, it's hard to avoid connecting the video--which Carey helped script--to her real life. In May, after four years of marriage and five multiplatinum albums together, Carey, 27, split from her husband, Sony Music president Tommy Mottola, 47, who had personally guided her career...