All through "The Deli", a movie centered around a New York City deli and its gambling-addict owner through the course of a weekend, the film shakes the audience by the shoulders again and again and shouts with the desperation of a drug addict in need of a fix (or a filmmaker in need of a positive buzz for his project)"I'm a quirky independent film with even quirkier independent-film-characters, I swear!!" Plot be damned! Scenes in "The Deli" are set up again and again to showcase the whacky ensemble cast of semi-familiar names playing loser-like, yet sometimes endearing characters that must inhabit the middle class neighborhoods of New York City's outer boroughs like locusts: one prime example is a scene involving a slimy Italian couple with over-the-top Brooklyn accents in a shouting match over some insipid topic as their stepdaughter dances around yelling with them, with rapper Ice T between them. The scene ends with Ice T stamping his foot in frustration and shouting with mighty gusto: "Damn! This place be crazier than my own hood!" Ha-ha. Boy, quirky independent films don't get any quirkier than this. Mike Starr, after a career of second-fiddle-at-best roles as the big, beefy working class guy with the big New York accent, finally lands a lead, and now he most likely never will again. Quentin Tarantino spawned a horrble plague on us all, and it is that of the bratty independant filmmaker who thinks Tarantino is successful only because he made "Reservoir Dogs" first. As a lifelong New York City resident, I've seen this breed of artists (and I use the term quite loosely) flock to Manhattan's trendier districts to jumpstart their careers, and the few who do just that, usually make B-Grade films like "The Deli", and paint their canvas with colorful New York characters who are mere figments in their imagination of what real New Yorkers must be like. I can't say it's all that insulting, at least when it's a mediorce quality film like this one, but it sure gets tiring after awhile, and makes one long for the days when Tarantino was still a waiter, and his army of wanna-bes still in Anytown, USA.
