Dummy: Um Amor Diferente

"Dummy" is an impressive movie for many reasons, but let's start with the show stealer... Milla Jovovich. Her character is something like a female Beavis & Butthead rolled into one but with great character development and evolution which pays off with her riveting singing performance at the story's climax. Her scenes alone (which some appreciative youtubers have strung together for our enjoyment) are worth the price of admission.

Not to be overshadowed is Adrian Brody who plays a nerdy ventriloquist (whose only friend is Milla). And in case you're wondering, yes, he operated the puppet and did all the ventriloquism himself according to the credits at the end.

The story: a nerdy ventriloquist wannabe (Brody), who is living at home at age 30-something because he can't keep a real job, pairs up with his high school pal (Jovovich) to chase his dreams and simultaneously win the love of a girl he's stalking. The humor is that the two of them, Brody & Jovovich, play characters who are so socially stunted that they'd be lucky if they could ride a bus downtown, let alone achieve their dreams of glory. By the way, Milla's dream is to be a punk rocker, but she keeps getting waylaid by the fact that her guitarist can never seem to get the right "reeear-weew-breeer-woow" (that's a quote). Until they switch to a bizarre new music genre which I won't spoil, you just gotta check it out and you WON'T be disappointed.

There's a simultaneous subplot involving our hero's sister (played by the hilarious Illeana Douglas) who is a failed-singer-turned-wedding-planner also living at home at age 30-something whist being stalked by an alcoholic accountant who does community theater in his spare time.

Perhaps you've figured it out from my description; this is a film about people who have failed in various degrees to achieve their dreams, and now solidly rooted in mediocrity, they make their way through life on the line of sanity. And frequently tripping over said line.

"Dummy" is a true gem of quirky excellence. The comedic timing between Brody's subdued character and Jovovich's hyper manic character is impeccable. Not to mention other supporting characters like the mother, father and of course Brody's love interest who each play memorable roles that contribute greatly to the humor. "Dummy" is an all round solid comedy that deserves a respectable cult following. Definitely not a wooden performance. Har har.

Steven (Adrien Brody), nearly 30 and living with his parents, sees an old Edgar Bergen movie on TV and decides to fulfill his longtime dream of becoming a ventriloquist. His beautiful unemployment counselor Lorena (Vera Farmiga) finds him work, but puts out a restraining order on him when he paints a thank-you note on her door. Later, this young mother agrees to date him anyway, but finds his bickering family, and his inexperience with women, daunting to a relationship. Steven's sister Heidi (Illeana Douglas) is a wedding planner with a drunken ex-fiancé who keeps showing up at the door. His friend Fangora (Milla Jovavich) is a pseudo-punk rocker whose sex does not prevent her from giving him terrible advice about women. The wedding of a Jewish girl, who wants Klezmer music and gets something unexpected, will become a turning point in everyone's lives.

Whoa, this is bad. Greg Pritikin directs his own script, about a tenth of which is funny. The rest strains hard to give us quirky characters, wacky situations and unexpected plot twists; but we can't buy any of it. The movie becomes unrecoverable when Lorena changes her mind about the restraining order and agrees to date Steven—after he mails her a videotaped apology featuring himself and his dummy. The message on her door disturbed her, but the tape charmed her? I could almost hear Vera Farmiga's brain going "ZZZZZT!" as she tried to play this character. Their relationship grows into the least believable nerd-with-beautiful-girl scenario I've ever seen.

The performances are varied. Adrien Brody recovers fairly well from playing such a pointless character. Farmiga is charming, especially considering the impossibility of her job. Jovavich, with her affected Jersey accent, never quite seems to inhabit her character. Illeana Douglas, a good actress, does a lousy job here. She doesn't seem to get what she's doing, and we can hardly blame her.

This is part of a sub-genre in comedy that I dislike: one that blurs the distinction between celebrating and belittling the losers it depicts. "Napoleon Dynamite," "Waiting for Guffman" and documentaries like "American Movie" and "Gates of Heaven" all belong in this dubious category. But "Dummy" is much worse. It's as phony as it is condescending.

Dummy (2002)

A fun, offbeat, somewhat frivolous charcoal gray comedy. It's hilarious in spots and touching in spots, and has some terrific acting. The overall scenario is a situation comedy, drawn out over the hour and a half, and it might have made a tighter hour long television show. At times it seems to really hit an eccentric tone that's terrific and even a little surreal, as with some of the family interactions, played with beautiful deadpan steadiness. And when it's a moving romantic comedy, you appreciate the restrained, sympathetic acting of several of the leads. There isn't a bad performance in the lot of them.

I really liked the quirky humour and though Adrien Brody's acting was astonishing, the ensemble playing and the interplay of dummy and people was what made the film work for me. I am an ignorant English Quaker and I had a simple question for the director or Adrien or any other American viewers. Is Adrien's character meant to represent a specifically Jewish character, or is the film, as I suspect, more universal in its design?

I teach 11-16 year olds and have written books on mainstreaming children with special needs. I may have read the movie all wrong, but to me the humour brought alive all the hassle that children with Asperger's Syndrome have, trying to communicate their ideas and feelings to an uncomprehending world. My old school has one of the best records in UK for bringing children on the autistic spectrum out of special schools into ordinary classrooms and get great results for them. It takes real love for the staff to help the other children treat them with the kind of respect they need to show their proper talents. The anguish in Adrien's eyes was met with perfect friendship and love in his sister and girl friends and I thought that it was this that helped him reveal his true talents.

I have never filled in a comments box like this before and I only do so because Dummy is one of my all time favourite movies

Respect

Adrien Brody is quietly wonderful as an unemployed nebbish in his late twenties who stills lives with his parents and has a fascination with ventriloquism; he finally buys a dummy of his own and practices the craft he's dreamed about, yet also realizes (via his new wooden companion) that it may be time to start growing up. Greg Pritikin wrote and directed this low-budget satire of suburban craziness, and seems to harbor an affection for bughouse characters all living on the edge. It isn't an original vision (Hal Hartley was mining this dryly eccentric territory 10 years ago), but it's still surprising how successfully Pritikin manages to pull this intentionally bumpy story together. Milla Jovovich is initially off-putting playing Brody's friend, a foul-mouthed garage rocker, but when she gets her band a job playing klesmer songs at a wedding--and immerses herself in the Jewish language--she reveals an appealing, sassy side that totally fits into Pritikin's offbeat universe. Illeana Douglas and Vera Farmiga are also very fine, and though the construction of the script is caricature-oriented, most of these actors overcome the slight material, revealing something unexpected in the process: a sunny story about weirdos that ultimately celebrates humanity. **1/2 from ****