SYNOPSIS: Maurice Kurtz is 35 years old. He and his five friends are actors who are getting nowhere fast, even though Maurice tries to look like a successful professional by keeping his face consistently unshaven, hippie style. Maurice is married to a really lovely girl who is working as a model and presumably bankrolling their joint expenses. Alas, Maurice's world comes tumbling down when the super-beautiful Perla tells him she has cancer and will have to relinquish her career. Maurice has one out: An American impresario has come to Paris to cast a Yiddish version of "The Merchant of Venice" of all plays, and is allegedly looking for a Yiddish-speaking actor to play Shylock. Maurice certainly qualifies on the Yiddish part, but a Shylock he is not!
COMMENT: This disappointing take on actors and acting, admittedly enlivened by Peter Coyote's fine performance, is weighed down by Steve Suissa's rigorously routine TV-style direction. Count up how many close-ups Friess receives, no matter how dull his dialogue or unimportant his reactions. I stopped counting when I got to fifty. As Henry Hathaway once told me, if you squander close-ups away on trivial material, you won't have any left when you really need them. The script held out some promise, but through over-writing, it gradually undermines its own credibility, even without Suissa's heavy, directorial hand. There are certainly moments in the movie (the early scenes with Bejo, the later scene with Rufus and just about all the footage with Coyote) when it comes to life, but despite the ironic situations imposed by the screenplay, the end result is tedious rather than engaging.
COMMENT: This disappointing take on actors and acting, admittedly enlivened by Peter Coyote's fine performance, is weighed down by Steve Suissa's rigorously routine TV-style direction. Count up how many close-ups Friess receives, no matter how dull his dialogue or unimportant his reactions. I stopped counting when I got to fifty. As Henry Hathaway once told me, if you squander close-ups away on trivial material, you won't have any left when you really need them. The script held out some promise, but through over-writing, it gradually undermines its own credibility, even without Suissa's heavy, directorial hand. There are certainly moments in the movie (the early scenes with Bejo, the later scene with Rufus and just about all the footage with Coyote) when it comes to life, but despite the ironic situations imposed by the screenplay, the end result is tedious rather than engaging.