Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

Jennifer Jason Leigh is Dorothy Parker in "Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle," a 1994 film also starring Campbell Scott, Peter Gallagher, Stanley Tucci, Matthew Broderick, Gwenyth Paltrow, Jennifer Beals, Lili Taylor, Martha Plimpton, Wallace Shawn - a large, excellent cast which would be needed to tell the story of the glittering literary geniuses who were part of the Algonquin Roundtable. Oh, to have been an adult in those days ('20s-'40s) when wit and education and intelligence were so prized! Parker, a unique talent who could write with pathos and humor, was surrounded by the likes of Robert Benchley, Edna Ferber, Charles Macarthur, Alexander Woolcott, Deems Taylor and Robert Sherwood. The sad thing is that if you're a young person and you happen to catch this film on the IFC channel, you won't have heard of any of these people. Nor will you be interested enough to look them up. People don't seem to have the intellectual curiosity they once did. I realize these are generalizations - just how general remains to be seen.

The atmosphere is set wonderfully in this film, which tells something of Dorothy Parker's sad life as she finds and loses love. Unfortunately, with possibly the exception of Campbell Scott as Benchley and at times Ms. Leigh, everyone is PLAYING Woolcott, MacArthur, etc. It's all a kind of let's pretend instead us showing us real people -- as famous as they all were, they were human beings. The script is uneven; the crazy, frenzied scenes at the Algonquin are the best ones, but we don't know these people well enough to be interested in smaller scenes.

I had the great pleasure of seeing Jason Leigh on Broadway in "Proof" and she was excellent - she is a very fine actress with a broad range. But in her attempt to successfully have all of Dorothy Parker's externals, she's tripped herself up. I unfortunately only understood maybe 40% of what she was saying. Not only do I doubt that was true of the real Dorothy, I also doubt going that far with the voice was necessary - very, very few people who would see this film ever heard Dorothy Parker speak. It's a little like doing Eliza Doolittle - if you actually spoke pure Cockney, the audience wouldn't understand a word. Parker's droll tones channeled through Leigh's mouth don't work. She does, however, create a very real and very sad person who lived in an interesting time, wrote about it and who loved and drank her way through it.

1920s poet and satirist Dorothy Parker, married to a morphine-addicted ex-soldier and recently fired as a writer for Vanity Fair, goes through a succession of men and magazine-published "doo-dads" before gaining a reputation as one of the greatest wits to come out of Depression-era New York City. "Mrs. Parker" is as rich an evocation of '20s Manhattan as we're likely to get today, and yet one wishes co-screenwriter and director Alan Rudolph would offer us more--or, at least, spring some surprises on us. There are morsels of splendorous chatter amongst the haves and have-nots of the literary world, but not enough to make a satisfying meal. Hollywood beckoned Dorothy Parker, but the experience left her depressed, as did life in general, which may be why she talked in a world-weary, dry-arch style which gave the impression of a woman with many disappointments in her closet. This is fascinating subject matter for the movies, but Rudolph barely dramatizes the material at all; he's so closed off from what's happening on the screen, many sequences plod by without any directorial nourishment. Certainly the large and interestingly cast group of actors on display are worth watching, though there are possibly too many real-life personalities rushing by us, everyone nonchalantly vying for time. Parker's "goodbye cruel war" attitude did not back her up in the end and, living until the year 1967, she survived most of her Algonquin Round Table cohorts. The film does not sentimentalize her or put her up on a pedestal, but neither does it help us to understand the tragedienne living beyond the wincing prose and words of woe. Jennifer Jason Leigh's portrayal divided the critics in 1994, yet she's definitely on to something special here. With a more incisive treatment, she may have delivered a true triumph. **1/2 from ****

Towards the end of her career, Dorothy Parker remembers the past days when she was part of the Algoquin Round Table, a group of friends who shared interests in the arts, drink and witty barbs at each others' expense. However behind the wit she has a lot of hurt and the story follows her through broken relationships and lost happiness.

I have seen this film several times but am only writing a review of it now. It always strikes me as being a very worthy film that is `good' and should be appreciated. But, this doesn't make it an easy film to access or watch. On the surface the overlapping dialogue and quick wit makes for a film hat could be accepted several ways. I was stuck in the middle. At once I felt that these people were pompous and condescending but then also felt that they were witty people and clever! The same with Parker herself – at times she was a good character but then at others she was mysterious and very hard to understand.

I suppose this is to the film's credit that it never paints it's subjects in one colour – there is room for interpretation. The one thing that struck me (me who uses a lot of sarcasm) is how much hurt was often put behind the barbs. As one character says, she never talks deeply with any of her friends and never gets beyond the next barbed remark. The fact that her life slides the way it does shows the danger in this. However the film does still allow the brighter side of her life to come out as well so that it isn't al gloom. This still doesn't make it easy watching – there is no one central narrative other than Parker herself. This made it feel a little free floating and aimless and it occasionally felt as hollow and pointless as the quick wit shared by unhappy people around the table.

The cast is pretty good. Leigh does occasionally come over as a woman giving an impression rather than a performance but she does manage to seem more natural when talking rather than quoting. The support cast is made up of quite a few B-grade stars (of quality and some not) and they all give good account of themselves. Broderick, Gallagher, McCarthy, Taylor and Tucci are among the cast but really it is Leigh's film to win or lose.

Overall this is a classy film. The direction and sets really get the period right and film feels good. However at times it seems aimless and much of the film is actually pretty depressing stuff. I took the warning from it of opening up rather than trying to be a smarta*se all the time, but I'm not sure if that was what it was saying. The cast do well and Leigh makes a good Mrs Parker despite just stopping short of out and out impersonation.

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.

I am a fan of many of the writers who flit in and out of this movie, but I confess I don't know much about their personal lives and habits (except perhaps for Benchley, and Thurber who is only barely mentioned in this film). This film gives the viewer a good sense of what it must have been like to be part of the wildly creative crew that surrounded the legendary Algonquin Round Table, but a very confused picture of Dorothy Parker's life. Only someone who already knows her story, and can keep her various husbands and lovers in order, can piece this mish-mash together. And none of the performers are strong enough to seem like anything more than walk-ons dressed as famous people. (The "gang" scenes work because of the fast pacing; the movie drags when we spend time with the individuals.) According to comments recorded here, Miss Leigh is doing a good vocal impression of Dorothy Parker. Maybe so (I've never heard Parker), but Leigh's delivery is so totally annoying that it's enough to drive the AUDIENCE to suicide. Is she trying to do Hepburn on downers? Sometimes her mannered accent veers toward Transylvanian.

Throughout the movie, Parker herself denigrates her little "doodad" poems, but that's all the film offers us of her creative output. We never really find out about the contents of her books and plays, and how she ended up in Hollywood (and what she wrote there). After a few of her doggerel verses, they become trite. I began to wonder if people think these poems are funny because they know they're SUPPOSED to be funny.

I'm sure there's probably a good movie in Mrs. Parker's life, but I don't think this is it.