The Boston Phoenix
Review from issue: September 16 - 23, 1999

[Boston Film Festival]

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Wirey Spindell

Woody Allen at his most indulgent combined with the Farrelly brothers at their most scatological might have come up with something like Eric Schaeffer's infuriating, surprising, uneven film. Played by Schaeffer himself in the 36-year-old, present-day incarnation, the title character is a self-involved, loutish New Yorker who's a lot less entertaining than he thinks he is. Faced with the prospect of marriage in a few days to the inexplicably forgiving Tabitha (Callie Thorne), he reflects on his past to find out why he's become such an asshole with women.

Quite the past it is. Alcoholism and gay sex at the age of seven. Hard drugs at 13. Leader of a rock band, a star jock, an academic failure, a rehab success story, a class-conscious doorman, and all along a wise-ass, hopeless romantic, and sexist pig. Tone is both a problem and solution in this vivid, self-depreciating, self-inflating confessional, which veers from black comedy to mawkish melodrama and leaves its subject by turns repugnant, fascinating, pitiful, and contemptible. Screens at the Copley Place Sunday, September 19 at 7 and 9:45 p.m.

-- Peter Keough


Film Festival Feature Films

| Keepers of the Frame | The Runner | The Carriers Are Waiting | Tumbleweeds | Deterrance | The War Zone | Happy, Texas | Joe the King | The Legend of 1900 | Best Laid Plans | Original Diner Guys | The Glass Jar | Rose's | Wirey Spindell | Starry Night | Bellyfruit |


More Boston Film Festival information, film descriptions, and show times



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