The Civilization of Maxwell Bright is an unexpected gem. The film is not only very funny but also surprisingly insightful and endearing. David Beaird has crafted one of the most winning American indie films of recent times with the help of a uniformly great cast.
Maxwell Bright is one of the most despicable anti-heroes to come along in some time. Max is a close-minded misogynist, living a painfully unhappy life in Los Angeles. After breaking up with his girlfriend, Max deems modern women too demanding and decides to buy an Asian mail order bride, hoping to purchase a sex slave and house cleaner in the one subservient package. Needless to say, Max gets more than he bargains for with Mai Ling.
At the core of the film is Max's transformation from a clueless Neanderthal to a reasonably well-rounded human being. This could have been incredibly trite in the wrong hands, but Beaird's acidic writing manages to keep any kind of sentimentality at bay. Beaird's writing can not be praised highly enough. He has crafted a truly hilarious screenplay with hidden depth. My only objection is Mai Ling's Buddhist nun back-story which seems very far fetched and out of place in a film so anchored in reality. The same could probably be said about the scene where Max takes Mai Ling to see a preacher.
Funny dialogue would be useless without the right actors and Beaird has collected a wonderful cast for the film. Patrick Warburton is a revelation as Max. Warburton gives a brave and honest performance, never shying away from the fact that Max is generally a bad person and knows it. This self-knowledge has the counter intuitive effect of making Max strangely endearing. Marie Matiko is good as Mai Ling but is somewhat hampered by the "wise Asian" syndrome, with some of her dialogue veering dangerously close to Grasshopper territory. Luckily Matiko is a good enough actress to imbue her performance with enough grit to be believable.
Eric Roberts almost steals the show as an uncharacteristically sympathetic character. Roberts, so renowned for playing sleazy thugs, is hugely affecting as Max's best friend, Arlis. The scene in which Max ends their friendship was the highlight of the film for me. I love Jennifer Tilly, so it was nice to see her in a small cameo as Max's doctor. The same can be said for the inimitable Missi Pyle, who has a memorable turn as a foul mouthed police woman.
The civilization of Maxwell Bright is a bitterly funny tale of one man's redemption. While I didn't quite buy into Max's "civilization" and found his fate somewhat theatrical, I still enjoyed the film immensely as a fascinating character study of an unpleasant, but very real, human being.
