Hurlyburly

If you look up hurly burly you'll find the definition: noisy disorder and confusion; commotion; uproar; tumult. That pretty much describes this movie. You have a core group of three friends, Eddie (Sean Penn), Mickey (Kevin Spacey) and Phil (Chaz Palminteri), who are somewhat monetarily successful and living in L.A., yet have the mentality of disturbed teenagers. Along with this core group are Artie (Gary Shandling), Darlene (Robin Wright Penn), Bonnie (Meg Ryan) and Donna (Anna Paquin). The four guys are pretty much constantly taking drugs of some sort or another. Eddie is stuck on one long diatribe about this, that and everything else; he's like a skipping record. Phil is prone to frequent, violent outbursts. Mickey seems to somewhat have it together, but it's almost like he's lowered himself to the level of his other friends. I could be totally wrong on this. If I had to make a pecking order Eddie would be in the middle with Phil on the bottom and Mickey on top. Phil has it the least together and Mickey has it the most, which isn't saying much. This was almost like watching a whole movie Derek Zoolander and his idiotic friends, only it wasn't funny and it was much darker. At one point Bonnie, after getting thrown out of her moving car by Phil, tells Eddie, "If your manner of speech is in any way a reflection of what goes on inside your head, you are lucky you can tie your shoes." That pretty much backs up my second observation that everybody in this film was so dumb at life they almost seemed retarded. My first observation being these 30-40 year old men were still living like they're in college. The whole quality of the dialog seemed quite lacking to me too. Maybe that's because it just wasn't very intellectual...or funny. That's one reason why I absolutely love Kevin Smith movies. Yeah his Jersey series is all about a couple of stoners and their adventures, but there's a lot of heart and soul put into them. It's the same reason why I love Judd Apatow's work. These are characters that just seem real to me in one way or another. I'm not quite sure if the whole point of this film was to poke fun at some of the absurdity of Hollywood or not. If that's the case, then this movie would be very similar to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I really couldn't stand that movie...even though I realized it was satirical. It was just a bit too much for me. Everybody in this film was so selfish and narrow-minded. It was pretty crazy. Made me glad I don't live that way. Some of the discussions and arguments reminded me of watching kids in high school all hyped up on hormones and emotions getting worked up about who-knows-what. You might discern from my tone that I wasn't a huge fan. That's pretty much true, however, I'm not dismissing this film as crap or worthless. Any good work of art produces a reaction. Movies that are really just terrible aren't even worth talking or writing about. Afterwards, it really hit me that this would make a much better play than film. I was checking out IMDB and saw that this was a play by David Rabe, who also wrote the screenplay. I don't know if I'd necessarily recommend this or not, unless you're really into movies.