Director: John Swanbeck
Year Released: 2000
Rating: 1.5
This bears a bit (read: a lot) of resemblance to Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot in that it involves characters waiting for a very important potential client to wind up at the 'hospitality suite' they've set up in a Kansas hotel room so they can deliver their sales pitch and hope he bites ... but finding him becomes another story. Kevin Spacey is the driven, cocky marketing rep who's been in the business too long (a perfect part for Spacey - it allows him, for the upteenth time, to steal the show), Danny DeVito as his colleague and friend, who is downbeat and suicidal after having a rocky divorce (DeVito is playing against type - he's usually fun-loving and boisterous but still very good) and newcomer Peter Facinelli, who spouts inappropriate religious babble and comes across as pathetic and unlikable. So here's how it goes: act one introduces them to each other, gives you a general sense of who they are; act two has them holding the party and somehow missing Godot (only the kid talks to him) and act three has the kid going out to find him, failing in the task originally assigned to him (he talks to Godot about Jesus rather than work) and then Spacey gets pissed and attacks him. That's it. Plot-wise, it's resoundingly tedious; morally, it's misguided and incoherent (what does Jesus have to do with any of this? I've seen Bergman films that are less ambiguous) and in the end gives you that dreaded 'empty feeling' that accompanies watching a film that thinks it carries more weight and substance than it actually does (anybody that considers this profound or enlightening has been duped). I'm not against filmed plays - Guare's Six Degrees of Separation (with Will Smith as a shady thief) and Sleuth (an acting tour-de-force with Olivier vs. Caine) are both exceptional movies. Note: Usage of Baz Luhrmann's song/mantra "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" over the last shots (and the credits) is an attempt to accentuate the 'old age vs. youth theme,' and would have been unnecessary had the eighty minutes before it made that just a little clearer.
