Playing By Heart

PLAYING BY HEART (1998)

Those of you curious about what it was like during the heyday of the Roman Empire, when gladiators were thrown to hungry lions, might want to check out this movie, in which one of the year's most talented casts gets thrown to the dogs. When I briefly lived in Los Angeles, actors were always putting together showcases. Showcases are loose, variety show type things that the actors would rent theater space for, put together a few scenes, a couple of monologues, maybe an extended skit, and then invite agents, producers and their supportive friends to. Playing By Heart feels like the world's most expensive showcase, which seems to miss the charm of such things, and houses a bunch of actors who are currently getting a lot of work, which seems to miss the point.

Jon Stewart, trying to act like his name could somehow be Trent The script shows a bunch of seemingly unrelated stories all centering around the many different types of love. Jon Stewart plays Trent, an architect, who's trying to pitch woo at neurotic Meredith, a theater director by night, marketing person by day, played by Gillian Anderson (the reason I went to see the movie). Angelina Jolie plays Joan, a club hopping goofball who becomes focused on mystery boy Ryan Phillippe, who dances in clubs by himself and says he won't date. Madeleine Stowe and Anthony Edwards play a couple who meet for trysts in hotel rooms and are married to other people. Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands play a married couple who are fighting about a possible past fling of Connery's. And, just for good measure, Dennis Quaid is a guy who stumbles into bars and seemingly comes on to women with stories of personal tragedy, while Ellen Burstyn plays the mom to Jay Mohr's character who is dying of AIDS in a hospital. As I said, Connery trying to figure out how to play a guy who doesn't smack his wife around everyone's seemingly unconnected but I figured out everyone's relationship to everyone else more or less (I missed Anthony Edwards' exact tie-in) by about the halfway point, leaving the last fifteen minutes when all is revealed to the audience completely dull. Overall, the whole thing seems to feel it's making some great points about love in the '90s, when in fact it's just a long unfunny episode of Love American Style. Each of the stories, although really hackneyed, could in fact be turned into a genuine movie with enough time and talented writing. Since the writer/director is well aware that he doesn't have the latter, he piles all the stories into one movie, thus making it look like he's only lacking the former. The whole Anderson/Stewart thing, for example, only has about 8 scenes to it in the entire movie (that's a generous estimate), the Stowe/Edwards thing has about 6, and the Ellen Burstyn/Jay Mohr thing maybe 4. And at the end of the movie, you basically expect the camera to pull back and show Doc, Gopher and Julie with their arms crossed looking satisfied with the way everything turned out. Bleah.

The real reason (if any really exist) to see this movie Some random additional points: Jon Stewart looks not only completely unlike a Trent, but looks like the type of guy who makes fun of guys named Trent. Angelina Jolie is beautiful and is a really good actor, and I was horrified to like Ryan Phillipe in this movie, and they actually had chemistry together; of course, they get maybe thirty five minutes of the movie. The Sean Connery/Gena Rowlands storyline is actually the same scene shown over and over until they decide to make up. Ditto the Madeleine Stowe/Anthony Edwards thing, and Madeleine Stowe bugs me; she just really rubs me the wrong way and has for years and years. She just seems to ooze contempt for everyone around her in some indefinable way I can't place. Jay Mohr has played a dying gay guy in this movie, a unctuous sports agent in Jerry Maguire, Jennifer Anniston's romantic lead in Picture Perfect, and the comic lead in the Zucker Brothers' flick Jane Austen's Mafia. He's waging this non-stop war against getting typecast, and I don't even think anyone outside Hollywood even knows who he is.

Bottom line: Gillian Anderson does not get naked, but you do see her in gym pants and a t-shirt when her character wakes up in the morning. That may not be the review you're looking for, but Playing By Heart is probably not the movie you're looking for, either.

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