Entre amigos

Released in 1991, this movie captures a quality New York possessed in the late eighties. The characters seem genuinely capable of making the wisecracks the script has them make. They're middle-class urbanites who are capable of desperate violence. Yet, they are not particularly violent. They are haunted by the hardscrabble lives of their parents. The story involves a group of people in their early-to-mid-thirties. They've known each other since childhood. The plot is this: Will the scheduled marriage between two members of this group actually take place? While he is not the lead actor here, John Malkovich plays a character who embodies the dilemma each one of the characters faces. Each one wishes he were somewhere else and yet each one would give his right arm for anybody else in this circle of friends. Unlike his friends, he is gay, but what he has in common with them is the sense that the upper-class will have nothing to do with him. He is dating an upwardly-mobile man and his confrontation with him is still refreshing thirteen years after this movie was filmed. Many movies and TV series have dealt with this milieu, but very few have pulled it off. It is not entirely believable--there's an over-the-top story-line with Jamie Lee Curtis as a smooth-talker who enchants the edgy Joe Mantegna--but it's assertive. QUEENS LOGIC is well worth viewing.