Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

While the performances and the writing are technically good, the overall impression is that of a lack of affect -- nobody in this movie really seems to care much of anything about anything. The only glimpses we have of Dorothy Parker (and slim glimpses they are) as anything but a sadly underestimated party girl are in her poetic interstices. Perhaps that's the point, but if so, it's lost in an Altmanesque whirl of cameos. The title accomplishes more to drive the theme than the whole of the movie; for me, that's a sign the movie just -might- have been better made.

In late October of 1929, Variety printed one of the most famous headlines in history ..... "WALL STREET LAYS AN EGG." Along about January of 1995, Variety might have repeated that headline, with a slight variation, for this movie: "MRS. PARKER LAYS AN EGG." According to IMDb, this movie amassed the ridiculously puny box-office gross of $2.144. million. That might have been good -- in 1929! But in this modern era, that kind of gross at the box office would not even qualify as bus fare for Bill Gates. Thus, by those standards, "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle" laid a bigger egg than the one laid by Wall Street 72 years ago. Just why DID this movie bomb so dramatically with the vast moviegoing public? Probably for a combination of reasons (as often is the case). One reason would be that the general moviegoing public could not relate to it in any way. Today's moviegoers are, for the most part, quite young and most of them have probably never heard of any of these people, much less actually know anything about them. And it matters not a whit how famous any of them might have been in "their day." Also, this movie is nothing if not a talkfest. Most of today's moviegoers, what I like to call the three-second-cut-weaned-on-MTV crowd, need at least the occasional bang-bang shoot-'em-up to maintain their attention and keep them awake. Finally, and perhaps most important of all, the movie is not very good. It is the type of movie which is often referred to as an "interesting failure." I'll even add a fourth reason why I think this movie failed: I'm not sure that it is even POSSIBLE to make a good movie about this subject matter. The real-life characters who are this movie's subject(s), as a group, remind me of the famous part-quote from Shakespeare's "MacBeth," to wit ..... "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." And I have yet another problem with this movie. Before writing this, I read MANY reviews of the movie, those of both IMDb users and professional critics. To a person, they commend the entire cast in all of their roles. I could not possibly disagree more! Take, for example, Andrew McCarthy, who plays Eddy Parker, Dorothy Parker's first husband. This guy has been THE WORST ACTOR IN MOVIES for the last 20 years. As such, he proudly carries both torch and scepter handed down to him by George Nader from many years earlier. When a female (of course!) IMDb user complimented his performance here, I really lost it. Or Matthew Broderick. He's a decent actor but one with a limited range (which does not extend much beyond "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"). Trying to imagine him as Charles MacArthur is a leap across the chasm of credulity which can only end in a fatal plunge. Even Gwyneth Paltrow, an Oscar winner, fails in this movie, playing a character who should not even BE IN the movie. Indeed, Jennifer Jason Leigh, exceedingly annoying as Dorothy Parker, is one of the few actors here who seems up to the task of playing the famous personality to whom he or she has been assigned. OK, one more. One more reason this movie failed was simply that ALL the famous people portrayed are so dislikable. As the self-appointed literati of The Jazz Age (the 1920s), how much can one stomach watching a group of alcoholics (which they surely were!) slicing and dicing everything and everyone -- including themselves -- to absolute shreds. This movie didn't just lay an egg at the box office. It was an egg-laying machine!

I didn't like ANY of the actors in this film. All of them do their jobs pretty badly. The fault for this probably lies with the director. Essentially, they told a, possibly interesting story, but they did so very incompetently. I was totally incapable to forget that the lead actress was acting. She was absolutely false from start to finish and I found myself strongly disliking her. The movie is full of scenes with Parker facing the camera in a kind of Shakesperean aside which enabled us to hear her poetry. The poetry is OK I guess but was murdered by the wooden acting and the funny voice that Parker was forcing out without a pause. The rest of the movie is just boring and I couldn't bring myself to finish the thing. I wonder if those people were really as tedious and pretentiously awful as they were portrayed as being. I guess I will never know. If you are interested in Parker, read her original work. This film will do nothing at all to endear her to you.

There are only two movies that I own or have rented that I could not at least finish and Mrs. Parker... is one of them. The movie was incredibly pretentious, positively brimming with self-congratulatory smugness. Leigh's performance was the worst I have ever seen (literally, I refer to this performance anytime I discuss abominable performances). Acting teachers should use it on how not to act. It ways thirty-five minutes of fingernails on a blackboard. I would not recommend it to my worst enemy.

Alan Rudolph repeats the mistakes committed by himself in The Moderns (1988), or James Ivory's "Quartet" (1981) in adapting the ambient and the atmosphere of the 1920's artistic world. I don't know exactly why, but both films insist in going bored, slow-paced. Add this the fact that "Mrs Parker..." is a biopic about writer and screenwriter "Eternally Unhappy Dorothy Parker" and her pals of the Algonquin Hotel Round Table. Surely a deserved tribute to these crazy bunch, but, why so dull and preposterous?

I have admired Dorothy Parker's work for many years and always found her persona to be fascinating. If someone had told me that it was possible to make a boring film about this lady, I would have disagreed. Sad to say, I would have been wrong. Last night I sat through the entire film, waiting—i vain—for are deeming moment. The script was a hopeless muddle, the acting was strenuous, the music went from bland to annoying, and the direction perfectly complemented these flaws. The only thing this wreck of a film has going for it is the costume design. Dorothy Parker's life deserves a film treatment, but this failed attempt will probably prevent that from happening any time soon, if ever. What a shame! Chris Albertson

As a bio of the witty writer Dorothy Parker, this film is a dud. We have JENNIFER JASON LEIGH, correctly attired in period costume and hairdo, but rattling about in scenes of overlapping dialog and barely discernible comments being muttered by her under her breath. A striking performance? I don't think so. Leigh strikes out here, just as she struck out when she attempted to win plaudits for her Catherine Sloper in WASHINGTON SQUARE. Nice period atmosphere, sets, costumes and music can't make up for an utterly aimless script that is as empty as the babble going on among the sophisticated literate circle Parker was a part of. She gets some nice support from a cast of competent players but since the whole film depends on understanding what makes Parker tick, it's got to be called a failure. Parker deserved better than this. Hopefully, some day someone with a sense of how to bring her to life will do so with a script that can make us sympathize with the characterization instead of the sketchy view we get here. Nor does it help that few of the characters bear any physical resemblance to the people they're portraying. Did they know what Robert Benchley looked like?

I think that this film was meant to be realist and naturalistic. However,there is the reality that this is an entertainment, and the audience has to hear and understand the lines. Supervigilance is required to do this in this movie. Not only does JJL's imitation of Dorothy Parker's speech affectations make the speech and musing of the main character difficult to understand, but the inclusion of background noise, overlapping dialog, and frequent muttering and mumbling of the performers make every character difficult to even hear, much less understand. Since so much of this movie is about legendary people mouthing famous aphorisms, it is frustrating to only hear snippets of their lines. I suppose the idea was to toss these famous lines away to add naturalism. However, without spotlighting the conversations of the legendary characters, however contrived this might be performed, this is just a very sad movie about a bitter, unhappy, self-destructive, unproductive writer. Not very easy to watch nor very interesting.

It's simple: Because it is just plain boring. And besides, I used to think that the 80s were something like the *arrogant decade*, but then I saw this movie about the 20s, made in the 90s. I hate the attitude these people have, I can't bear it. And actually, most of the time, the movie made me want to sleep! The whole 20s plot completely sucks, I couldn't care less. It's like one hour and a half without anything happening. But there are also scenes, filmed in black and white, from the 40s and 50s. And I must say, these scenes excel. And here Jennifer Jason Leigh almost saves it. She acts and suffers without any restrict and she is very good especially when she's suffering and when she's sarcastic. Actually she smokes and drinks and has sex all along, and I couldn't care less about it, and her face constantly tells you everything, without being too obvious. But I couldn't care less about any other character or actor in the movie. I really felt it's just awful, most of its running time. However, the final 10 minutes really saved it. Still, Jennifer Jason Leigh is bitter to an extent that isn't easy to bear, and I don't understand why anyone bothered making a *movie* like this. For if you'd cut Ms Leigh's performance out, nothing would *move* at all! 3 out of 10 points.

The movie is episodic and depends too much on the viewer's having prior knowledge of the life of Dorothy Parker and her literary friends. Its saving grace is Jennifer Jason Leigh as Mrs. Parker. Her only flaw is that, in trying to look and sound like Parker, her dialog is often hard to understand. Still, one of the greatest and most under-rated performances by an actress in an American film in the 1990s.