Boy, they must have offered these stars a lot of money for this tripe, because I can’t conjure up any sensible reason why they’d star in this. We get an all-star cast of Edward Norton, Robin Williams along with Catherine Keener who was so good in “Lovely & Amazing” but completely makes me lose any future interest in her as an actress. The cast stumble around this movie, playing these despicable characters in their sleep.
Viktor Taransky (movie legend Al Pacino Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather) is a movie producer who’s basically fed up with uptight actresses and in an attempt to regain his fame, creates a computer generated actress named Simone (Rachel Roberts). But as she becomes famous worldwide, Viktor begins to wonder if he made her famous or if she made him famous. I really enjoyed Katherine Keener’s role as Taransky’s tough ex-wife who also works with him in the studios; she always manages to pull in some good performances in stinkers and excellent films such as “Lovely & Amazing.”
Aaron Stanford makes his debut as Oscar Grubman, a fifteen year old intellect with an obsession for Voltaire who returns home to New York to visit his family. He has a bad crush on his stepmother Eve (Sigourney Weaver) unbeknownst to his inept father Stanley (John Ritter) but accidentally gets entangled in an affair with her flirtatious friend Diane (Bebe Neuwrith) who becomes infatuated with Oscar’s intelligent personality and begins to play mind games with him as he desperately tries to conceal the affair from his stepmother. Aaron Stanford skillfully portrays this kid who’s always one step ahead of everyone… or at least he thinks he is.
I was pleasantly surprised at how “Lovely & Amazing” exceeded all my expectations. We get a truly incredible heart-wrenching story about these women that face what everyday struggles involving body image. Director Nicole Holofcener also explores how petty these issues about image can be to a woman, and how it so ironically affects their lives inadvertently. “Lovely & Amazing” tells the tale intense tale of four women facing life and its many challenges. We meet Michelle (Katherine Keener) a woman in the crossroads of her life as she faces a dead-end marriage. She is an aging woman who is a struggling artist with a husband who shows basically no interest in her sexually.
Jackie Chan seems often bored and detached from this film, never giving the charisma he displays in his movies. It dawned upon me that he might be aging or running out of ideas as he starts using wires to help with most of his stunts. We open with him attempting to ask a sexy art dealer on a date and ultimately screw it up. I found it hard to believe that an art dealer would go out with a creepy stuttering taxi driver, so I wasn’t surprised when she rejected him like a bad habit.
This is a very disappointing effort from Disney. The entire movie is very pedestrian and nothing entirely stands out within the viewing of this. First off, the plot, though sweet is very contrived and never brings to mind the words innovative, which most Disney movies are known for. The movie is a rip-off of “Extra-Terrestrial”, the only problem is, “E.T.” is a better movie.
There have been many rip-offs of “Pulp Fiction” over the past years, many movies mimicking the exact formula that made this influential movie so famous. This movie is an incredible mess including crude humor, a lot of which involving butts and farting, a running gag that plays throughout the movie about a common stereotype of African American genitalia, and a few plot holes here and there including one large one that made absolutely no sense. After Elmo McElroy is caught with marijuana, his potential career as a pharmacist is over. Thirty years later, a crime syndicate led by the Lizard wants his formula for the ultimate addictive drug POS Formula 51.