March 5, 1996 Bie Press 11 Mary Reilly Julia Roberts does (sigh) all right... by Daniela Zanatta __ frequently as Dr. Jekyll weakens _ and loses control over his other Reilly is the story of land Mr. Hyde seen - > eyes of Jekyll's self. ~ loyal and sensitive ‘Throughout all the housemaid. Julia Roberts interactions. between portrays the quiet but strong herself and Jekyll and Mary and = John Hyde, Mary doesn’t Malkovich has the ‘realize that the two are dual role of Jekyll : person. Her and Hyde. - make you think. J ox hn Malkovich does a good job playing a dual role, and Julia Roberts makes an all right Mary Reilly, but the Kicking & Screaming Mar 8—14 at the Ridge by Peter T. Chattaway As the saying goes, I may not know much about art, but I know what I like. That’s the feeling I often get when called upon to describe ensemble movies, those character-driven films that divvy their narrative into a string of parallel subplots that can be notoriously difficult to define. Witness the trouble their own creators seem to have in naming them: based on titles alone, would anyone guess that Beautiful Girls is actually a film about male bonding, or that Noah Baumbach’s Kicking & Screaming is a delightfully droll, even calmly ironic, look at life after college graduation? Dialogue-heavy thespian hangouts are a dime a dozen, particularly in this age of independent films with budgets so low they can barely pay their actors to talk, but Baumbach has a gift for language that sets his film apart. The graduation party that starts the film is a delightful case in point, full of zesty one- liners and idiosyncratic details that would, in clumsier hands, come off as overly contrived (one Clerks per generation is more than enough, thank you). Here, though, the punchlines seem authentic, or at least plausible, as though Baumbach had whittled an evening’s worth of social espionage down to a reel of rib-tickling highlights. Unfortunately, this approach also underlines Kicking & Screaming's greatest weakness: namely, a tendency to sacrifice more soulful moments in favour of clever lines and witty repartee. The characters appear to be defined by their speech, not vice versa. The closest thing this film has to a central driving force comes from the flashbacks in Eric Stoltz... which Grover (Josh Hamilton) revisits his courtship with Jane (Olivia d’ Abo), the girlfriend who left him for Prague, but there doesn’t appear to be much of a heart lurking behind the creative comebacks. Jane’s habit of taking notes during their conversations says it all: theirs is not a relationship to be cherished, but quoted. Still, all films should sound so smart, and Baumbach spreads the gems fairly evenly among his predominantly male cast: there’s Max (Barcelona’s Chris Eigeman), who finds the school’s “potato entree” overpriced but dates the teenaged food server (Cara Buono) anyway; Otis (Willem Dafoe lookalike Carlos Jacott), who can’t commit himself to a graduate school, hobby, or consistent fashion sense; and Skippy (Jason Wiles), the only one of the lot who still harbours anything resembling a precritical naivete—naturally, he’s got acynical girlfriend (Parker Posey) who’s itching to end their relationship. The lion’s share of bon mots, however, goes to Chet (Eric Stoltz), the perennial student—one might call him an academic barfly if he wasn’t already Peet ed aaa d the campus’s bartender—and local elder who advises the undergrads with the wizened affability that comes from a decade of taking every course under every teacher and “losing quite a few girlfriends to graduation.” (Chet’s seniority comes naturally to Stoltz, who’s already perfected in films like Sleep with Me and Bodies, Rest and Motion the sort of roles his colleagues are trying here for the first time.) The irony, of course, is that Chet, content with his permanent state of flux, is the most mature person in the film, even more so than, say, Grover’s dad (Elliott Gould), who won’t stop talking about life’s insecurities: separation (“A divorce would be too expensive for us right now”), sexually transmitted diseases, and hopeless attempts to revive an acting career. The other characters all live in a state of chronological chaos: if two lovers aren’t accusing each other of acting like children, they’ re wishing they could someday be an “old couple,” but they never seem to know what they ought to be now. But never mind. It’s fun to watch them just the way they are. Attention Douglas Students!!! Racieve 10% off our already unbeatabie value on all food items Liscount available everyday on all lunch and dinner entrees