dailyshampoo48
competent film making with more former, current, and future a-list stars than you can shake a stick at. seriously, everyone's in this movie.one of the other reviewers quipped, "I didn't think it would be possible to make a boring film about dororthy parker, but here it is". i agree; judging from the source material this should have been a slam dunk. i think the problem is jennifer jason leigh's diction; her character speaks very slowly and self-importantly in a faux-British accent, which i suppose is to either give the impression that is a Great Writeress or deeply unlikeable. this is rendered even more frustrating as ms parker delivers some pretty sweet dialogue which i deduced from the appreciative laughter of the other characters and not leigh's unintelligible mumbling.was extremely impressed to learn that ms parker had been a co-writer for the original A STAR IS BORN, which if you are not aware is one of the Great Films and Great Screenplays; its myriad remakes attest to this. of course her sex life was very interesting but i wonder if the filmmakers could have better impressed us with a sense of time and place as well literary chops by emphasizing this Hollywood milestone.
moonspinner55
As rich an evocation of 1920s Manhattan as "Mrs. Parker" is, one keeps wishing it would offer more...or at least surprise us with some splendorous chatter amongst the haves and have-nots of the literary world. Dorothy Parker, married to a morphine-addicted ex-soldier and recently fired as a writer for Vanity Fair, goes through a succession of men and magazine-published "doo-dads" before gaining a reputation as one of the greatest wits to come out of Depression-era New York City. Hollywood beckoned, but did not satisfy her--nor did life in general, which may be why she talked in a world-weary, dry-arch style which gave the impression of a woman with many disappointments in her closet. This is fascinating subject matter for the movies, yet co-writer and director Alan Rudolph barely dramatizes the material at all; he's so closed off from what's happening on the screen, many sequences plod by without any directorial nourishment. Certainly the large and interestingly cast group of actors on display are worth watching, though there are possibly too many real-life personalities rushing by on the screen, everyone nonchalantly vying for time. Parker's goodbye-cruel-war attitude did not back her up in the end and, living until the year 1967, she survived most of her Algonquin Round Table cohorts. The film does not sentimentalize her or put her up on a pedestal, but neither does it help us to understand the tragedienne living beyond the wincing prose and words of woe. Jennifer Jason Leigh's lead portrayal divided the critics in 1994, yet she's definitely on to something special here. With a more incisive treatment, she may have delivered a true triumph. **1/2 from ****
cheshire551225800
For some reason the period around the 1920s and the early 1930s was this great flowering of artistic genius.In Mexico City you had Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and their circle of artist and intellectual friends, which you can watch in the great film by Salma Hayek "Frida" I actually went to Frida Kahlo's neighborhood in Mexico City because I wanted to see her house and the house where Trotsky was killed, but it was closed that day.In London you had the Bloomsbury Group with people like Aldous Huxley, mark Gertler, Virginia Woolf, Carrington, Lytton Strachey etc. Which you can watch in the great Emma Thompson film "Carrington".In New York you had Mrs. Parker and the Algonquin Roundtable. Most of these people above interacted in different ways often in Paris where Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dali, Piccaso, Somerset Maugham, Aleister Crowley, Cole Porter, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin et al held forth in Monte Martre and the French Riviera.Everyone in this film is great and sometimes I think I was just born too late to hang with all these brilliant (and sometimes very unpleasant) people in so many countries.I've read a lot of Dorothy Parker's work and she has a great feminist voice that couldn't be suppressed. Many don't even know they are quoting her when they are. I just read a review of the Johnny Depp movie "Libertine" and someone stated that the actress showed an emotional range from A to B, which is a directly stolen Quote from Parker." Yes, she was drunken, cynical, disillusioned, suicidal etc. but she was and is also great.This movie is a whose who of actors. A lot of people don't even realize that Cyndi Lauper is in it. It was an early movie of both Gwenneth Paltrow and Heather Graham etc. etc.Watch it and love it.
LCShackley
I am a fan of many of the writers who flit in and out of this movie, but I confess I don't know much about their personal lives and habits (except perhaps for Benchley, and Thurber who is only barely mentioned in this film). This film gives the viewer a good sense of what it must have been like to be part of the wildly creative crew that surrounded the legendary Algonquin Round Table, but a very confused picture of Dorothy Parker's life. Only someone who already knows her story, and can keep her various husbands and lovers in order, can piece this mish-mash together. And none of the performers are strong enough to seem like anything more than walk-ons dressed as famous people. (The "gang" scenes work because of the fast pacing; the movie drags when we spend time with the individuals.) According to comments recorded here, Miss Leigh is doing a good vocal impression of Dorothy Parker. Maybe so (I've never heard Parker), but Leigh's delivery is so totally annoying that it's enough to drive the AUDIENCE to suicide. Is she trying to do Hepburn on downers? Sometimes her mannered accent veers toward Transylvanian.Throughout the movie, Parker herself denigrates her little "doodad" poems, but that's all the film offers us of her creative output. We never really find out about the contents of her books and plays, and how she ended up in Hollywood (and what she wrote there). After a few of her doggerel verses, they become trite. I began to wonder if people think these poems are funny because they know they're SUPPOSED to be funny.I'm sure there's probably a good movie in Mrs. Parker's life, but I don't think this is it.
AD
