A Gun in Each Hand

It's hard to believe in any of the situations in this portmanteau of character sketches, because the writing is clever rather than dramatic, and the scenes are played self-consciously by actors and a director, who must think they're being a lot more charming/interesting/amusing than I did. There's smugness, and meanness in the way that these hapless 40 somethings are portrayed as they struggle with their lives in the kind of urban artificial situations usually presented in comedy sketches. The non-cinematic style is suited to a radio play, but most radio plays would give these kind of interactions a bit more pace; there's too much pausing - for us to laugh? There were very few titters in the cinema when I saw it. And I get the feeling we were supposed to laugh at, not with the characters. The last two sketches are cross-cut, as two separate women tell two separate male friends about their husbands' shortcomings. We (the audience) have no emotional investment in either the husbands or the wives, so why should we care about the husbands' impotence/violence/jealousy and its effect on the women? It's like being party to bitchy gossip about someone you don't know. The film left me with a sour taste; apart from not really believing in any of the characters, I didn't like them. This is one for cold metroplolitans.