Review of Hurlyburly

Introduction

"Anybody can go under Eddie, I mean we`re all going f***in` under. So, how about a little laugh along the way,"
Mickey (Kevin Spacey) in `Hurlyburly`

Brilliant playwright David Rabe, best known for the peerless one set Vietnam basic training drama `Streamers` (filmed by Altman in 1983) adapted his play `Hurlyburly` to the screen with the help of director Anthony Drazan (`Imaginary Crimes`, `Zebrahead`) to modest acclaim. Although Drazan never quite constructs the palpable claustrophobia that makes inherently theatrical work powerfully cinematic, `Hurlyburly` still works a wickedly funny and burningly truthful game in modern day male-malaise burnout.

Video

Okay. The colours are a but runny, the blacks more like fuzzy dark blues. The images are sharp enough however and doped up Sean Penn does indeed start to look like he has a "radish for a face."

Audio

Dolby Digital, only 2.0. But considering the film`s theatrical origins and dialogue driven nature it hardly matters, talk is clear and well recorded but some subtitles would have been helpful during some of Penn`s fantastic freewheeling toke-and-coke induced rants.

Features

Piffling. The manic trailer often fudges the film`s tendency to the dark and sulky in favour of the nasty and cynical, but you know, fun! There are some pointless cast/crew notes and some pretty good biographies for principal cast and crew. However, the region 1 release was a New Line Platinum and included 2 commentaries among others. For shame. I thought we`d gotten over this Euro-discrimination. Evidently not.

Conclusion

Eddie (Sean Penn) a manic, unpredictable, near suicidal Hollywood button-pusher spends his life jabbering incessantly on his cell-phone, lounging around his luxurious `pad` on the Hollywood Hills indulging in unhealthy quantities of the `Bolivian health-food` and generally not doing much work. His complex, globalistic whirlwind of arrogance and self-loathing is accentuated by the self-absorbed jerks who orbit his life: slick, sarcastic, peroxide-blond cynic Mickey (Kevin Spacey) who has been reveling in a spot of after-hours bonkage with Eddie`s ex-squeeze Darlene (Robin Wright Penn). Then, there`s Phil (Chazz Palmenteri) a down-on-his-luck actor with a rocky personal life; Arty (Garry Shandling) a vaguely perverted hanger-on; Donna (Anna Paquin) a two-bit teenage live-in `pet` and Bonnie, a grungy whore (a distracting cameo by Meg Ryan).

Not much of a plot evolves here although the relationship between Eddie and his various associates cascades from one bickering verbal shoot-out to the next and Phil`s relationship with life deteriorates leading to a tragic finale. There`s much to enjoy: particularly in Rabe`s scathing, high and low flung, poetic rock-and-roll prose and some deliriously spot on performances: Penn is perfect as screeching self-obsessed rodent Eddie, the kind of guy who read Sartre and never quite got over it, who seems to suffer from being terminally melodramatic. Spacey is brilliant too, lending the film a savagely funny line in humor that manages to even out the otherwise morbid and brooding atmosphere. Although Ryan and Palmenteri are miscast, Paquin and Wright Penn are pleasant surprises in fairly slender and un-showy roles.

Drazan however, somewhat lets the side down. His direction is too theatrically reverent, too unobtrusive. A play like `Hurlyburly` needs to be given a sense of cinematic gravitas in order to break its theatrical mould and work as a piece of cinema in its own right. This, it does not do. `Hurlyburly` is a potent, provocative and funny play but the movie never quite comes together because Drazan over-estimates the power of Rabe`s writing to transcend the barrier.

This said, Rabe`s script does keep the movie going most of the time, particularly when Penn and Spacey are on the screen, their scenes together being the most memorable and verbally kinetic. `Hurlyburly` doesn`t rack up the devastating emotional punch of `Streamers`, mainly because Altman knew how to make cinema, whereas Drazan simply films a play and fills in the holes.