If Lucy Fell (1996)

Summary: Two friends (Sarah Jessica Parker, Eric Schaeffer) make a pact to kill themselves by the time they're 30 if their love lives don't pick up before then.

Naturally, that's also in month's time.

I think it happens to every actor. You're not getting call backs, not getting auditions even for the worst scripts that your agent passes along. Your agent threatens to drop you. Maybe he even does. It happens. It's not nice, but it happens.

So you set out to rectify what you assume is this terrible wrong. You write a script, direct it, and cast yourself in the lead to showcase your talents, your leading man allure, your charm and good looks. It certainly seems like a sensible path, especially if you can get someone to produce and agree to leave you in all three roles.

Unfortunately for Schaeffer, this little plan of his backfired. Instead of writing the kind of characters that capture the hearts and minds of his audience, he created self-centered childish brats who lacked anything approaching a sense of humour or warmth and who refused to behave in ways that were sensible or in keeping with their characters, never mind rational.

Plus, he's unattractive and only minimally talented.

So you combine a plot involving features as poorly explained and developed as a "hug test" and is still completely obvious at the same time, and highlights really bad hair styles and fashion choices while you're at it. Makes viewers want to beat their own heads in with their remotes. F

While we're here, I might as well tell you about another crap movie I watched recently.

I Shot Andy Warhol (1996)

Summary: Occasional prostitute and playwright Valerie Jean Solanas (Lili Taylor) enlists the aid of Andy Warhol (Jared Harris) in her quest to produce the accompanying play to her feminist manifesto but shoots Warhol in the end when she decides that he has "too much control over [her] life."'

Sad but true story.

I'm not terribly surprised that these two movies are from the same year. Makes sense to me.

Listen, Taylor, as much as I love you, and you know I do, this movie was painful to watch. It only had two rewards, and neither of them involved your character. I should probably think it was bold of you to play her amoral antics without a hint of judgment or remorse, but, well, I didn't. I just thought it was crap. Not you, per se, but your character. Mostly because she preached a helluva lot more than she ever practiced.

No, those rewards were Reg Rogers - who rocks - as Warhol's nebbish director and Jill Hennessey as a CBC reporter. She's got a husky voice like Taylor, and I dig.

As for the rest of it, though, not so much. Maybe it would mean more to me if I read Solanas' manifesto, but this movie kind of put me off of the idea. F