Dummy

Let's face it: even Woody Allen has gotten stale setting up laughs using the stereotypical Jewish dysfunctional family (is there an oxymoron in that description?). It's been done so many times. The welcome surprise is that director and writer Greg Pritikin takes this old kreplach (in place of chestnut) and makes it work with a novel theme brought to life by a terrific cast.

Adrien Brody made this movie before his Oscar-winning portrayal of a gifted Jewish musician in "The Pianist." Here he is a young man, Steve, whose lifelong ambition (he's bordering on thirty) is to become a ventriloquist. He buys a dummy and takes lessons (Brody, who passed fairly well as a concert pianist in his better known film, actually did all the dummy tricks and ventriloquism here).

Steve lives at home with his mom (Jessica Walter) who is forever shoving food at everyone. His dad (Ron Leibman) is retired and he pursues a common hobby of men no longer gainfully employed: making scale model warships while watching hard core porn. Sister Heidi (Ileana Douglas) dreamed of becoming a singer. Her ambition crushed, largely by her scatterbrain mother, she is now a wedding planner, her first big job creating agita in the first degree. She's pursued by a clearly insane former fiance to her distress.

Steve's closest friend from high school days is rock singer Fangera (Milla Jovovich) who has a cum laude Master's in Public Crudity. Their relationship is platonic and Fangera is very albeit crazily devoted to her longtime buddy. Desperate for work for herself and her band, she passes herself off to Heidi as a klezmer specialist, exactly what the despairing wedding planner needs for her first big event. Of course she knows nothing about klezmer music and her immersion in studying that genre is a riot by itself. So is the payoff at the wedding.

Steve, fired from his job, meets employment counselor Lorena (Vera Farmiga) and sparks of all kind begin to fly. Lorena is a single mother with an adorable little girl and she's both attracted to Steve and shy about a commitment. Their relationship, which begins with a weird approach concocted by the barely sane Fangera, rolls back and forth and is kind of touching.

No need to say more about the plot. This fast-paced romantic comedy works with all the principal cast members playing off each other in an often funny and occasionally serious and meaningful way. Surprises are few but when has a ventriloquist's dummy been central to story development in any recent film?

The special features on the DVD are fun. Included is an interactive test in which the viewer answers a series of questions and then finds out what kind of dummy he or she is. I was ranked a ...hey, that's my personal business.

There's also a storyboard history of ventriloquism which points out that this entertainment form allowed, decades ago, a performer to "say" things through his dummy that would have been unacceptable directly from his mouth (including negative comments about politicians).

As usual, reading the credits closely paid off. The technical adviser was Paul Winchell and the assistant technical adviser...Jerry Mahoney. I think you have to be from my generation to appreciate that.

8/10

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 ****

I had a premonition I was about to see a comedy with a lot of heart even before the main titles played out at a screening of "Dummy" at the American Film Market 2000 recently.

In the opening scene, Steven, who lives with his eccentric parents and sister, sits enthralled watching the flickering tv image of ventriloquist Edgar Bergan and his dummy, Charlie McCarthy. As the camera moves in on the young man, we see in his eyes the depth of his dreams and aspirations to at last make something of his humdrum life. The next day, he gives up his 9-to-5 job and announces to his dysfunctional family that he wants to be a ventriloquist. His ever-busy mother(Jessica Walter), making yet another tuna sandwich, remarks that his career choice is" nice but not very realistic" while his sister observes that with the dummy on his lap, Steven looks like a child molester.

Casting is right on the mark. Adrien Brody brings a sympathetic and likable quality to the role of Steven as he manipulates his dummy to express his own private fears and feelings to the people around him. Vera Farmiga, the love interest, is extremely engaging as his employment counselor and Illeana Douglas, the very unmarried sister, is constantly funny. Outstanding too is Milla Javovich as Steven's best friend, a punk rocker with layers of attitude. Writer and director Greg Pritikin skillfully holds down the pathos and gives his film just the right touch of humor. An entertaining movie that is worth a look.

Adrien Brody , Milla Jovovich, and Illeana Douglas are all hilarious in this great little comedy... Beautiful Milla shows her unique talent for being simultaneously really sexy and really funny, as she did 5 yrs earlier, in "The Fifth Element"... What I like most is that the humour is mainly subtle. The funniest bits are more understated than they are in the bigger-budget comedies with the in-your-face – appeal to the broadest possible audience stuff... "Dummy" is a fine example of not compromising, in order to harvest the biggest-possible box-office receipts. I give this side-splitting indie 8 big-ones and whole-heartedly recommend it.

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.