One needs a certain warped sense of humor to enjoy this film. Trixie (Emily Watson) is a self proclaimed `Private Defective' whose butchery of English is nothing short of cleavacle. Her command of idioms is not as bad as it is worse. She is Norm Crosby taken to the tenth powder. She mixes semaphores with a high-speed blender. Her malapropriations are so funny they border on historical.
The writing of Trixie's dialogue by Alan Rudolph is extremely clever, but the story that surrounds it is very quirky, meandering off point constantly. I'm not a big fan of Rudolph's wry style of directing, but this film actually has its moments. Some of the things that pop out of Trixie's mouth are priceless. I found myself tolerating the boring story to hear what she would say next.
Emily Watson's performance is excellent. She gives Trixie a naïve charm and gritty determination that is fun to watch. It is hard to fathom how she is able to say her lines with a straight face. Her Chicago accent is horrendous though. Nathan Lane also gives a tragically droll performance and Nick Nolte is absurdly humorous in his caricature of the corrupt state senator.
This film was pounded by almost everyone, but I like this kind of word gymnastics, so I enjoyed it despite itself. I rated it a 6/10. If you can appreciate a punny character without much of a story, it might be worth a try.
