*
Cast: Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Chazz Palminteri, Gary Shandling, Meg Ryan, Robyn Wright Penn, Anna Paquin
Director: Anthony Drazan
Rating: R18
Reviewer: Russell Baillie
In a word, excruciating. Here's a film which lost much of its sense of purpose immediately the casting process and the players - including "our" Paquin - were let loose
to rant and rave through screeds of tortuous dialogue while playing a bunch of agonisingly self-absorbed characters from somewhere high on the Hollywood food chain.
Both Penn and Spacey played the roles from the original play adapted for film by its writer, David Rabe: a fact which only seems to encourage Penn, in particular, to greater heights of thespian onanism in his role as Eddie, the spineless coke-addled film exec who's much given to existential angst when he's not squabbling with flatmate and business partner Mickey (Spacey, who takes his snide routine to the point of self-parody).
Around their torrid but well-wheeled lives flit bloke friends like bit-part actor and man-on-the-verge Phil (Palminteri) and oily Artie (Shandling).
Then there's the women who get in their way, including jailbait drifter Donna (Paquin), who is quite happy to become the flat mascot and sex toy for a while; Darlene (Wright Penn), who's bouncing between Eddie and Mickey; and exotic dancer Bonnie (Ryan), who cops some of Phil's violent streak..
A film less to be enjoyed than endured, it fails to be anything but an exercise in letting its cast do something "honest" and "truthful" and "confronting" - and can't you just hear the conversations with their perplexed agents, saying just those things and how doing something gritty like this is just good for their acting souls.
Bully for them. The play might have had something to say about Men These Days but it already feels dated, even before Eddie starts gazing meaningfully at the Gulf War footage on his television.
While you'd think a dark streak of humour would be necessary to survive all those unsympathetic characters in such a seedy milieu, there's just no room.
As it is, any character insight gets swamped in all those verbal torrents, where director Drazan just seems to let 'em go in elongated scenes that help to make Hurlyburly two of the longest, most painful hours you could spend at the movies this year.
