When Will I Be Loved

What a real bummer. I have to lay most of the rap on Mr. Toback. First, inserting himself into an already short movie (that must run 81 minutes with opening AND closing credits) appeared both self-aggrandizing, unnecessary, and a near complete digression (as was the lengthy cameo by former boxing great Mike Tyson). I would elaborate but I don't want to ruin some questions that might arise should you be paying attention (Picture Michael Moore on the Atkins diet, wearing a dashiki).

Neve Campbell is thoroughly charming and totally wasted as the lost, passionate rich girl. Bottom line, is that there will be thousands make off of her nudity in this flick. The nudity only consists of a shower scene. The sex scenes are little more than bumping and grinding and contrived, and I can only wonder if the talent were as uncomforable making those scenes as I was watching them.

But back to the erstwhile Mr. Toback, if you listen carefully to his voice early on, then you'll likely hear it in the other characters as well. His New York chatterbox cadence becomes tiresome.

I had hoped for better. Ms. Campbell is a major talent is one or two films away from breaking out super huge. Mr. Toback is also talented though this certainly isn't the work to pin his fame on. I wish them well in their future endeavors, and mourn for the eighty-one minutes I can never get back.

This movie got a lot of undeserved juice from Roger Ebert's four-star review, and it's just awful. I've liked some of Toback's other work, particularly "Fingers", but this thing feels like a really boring home movie on autopilot. It's purportedly about the non-adventures of this bratty little rich girl (Neve Campbell) and her no-account boyfriend (Fred Weller) and, ultimately, their scheme to seduce a rich Italian count (Dominic Chianese) out of some major money. But it takes some time to get to this plot point, and up till then, the movie just meanders in a cinema-verite sort of way that makes it seem like Toback can use it as an excuse for the picture being a dud. It's like he's saying, "Well, whatever we shot, we shot. I can't be held responsible for the randomness of events."

The movie goes from Neve Campbell meeting one person on the street to another in what I'm sure Toback would insist was "character development", but it's done in such a way that it all rings false. It's scripted without being scripted. In another words, it's contrived. When Neve's college professor (played by Toback) explains what he thinks is going on with Neve and her head games, you can almost hear the gears locking in the background. It might be the most mechanical ad-libbed sequence in history.

Toback's use of celebrity here is also peculiar. The Mike Tyson cameo is pretty funny; he actually gives the movie a momentary spark. But when Toback has Neve recognizing a bit actress like Lori Singer on the street like she's Jane Fonda, I wonder what world he's living in. This whole "expository" part feels like padding, like Toback didn't have enough legit material to go around. Then, when the action shifts to the "scheme" in the final twenty minutes, it's good - it's the best part of the film. But the effect is a little jarring. Toback goes from a lazy, dawdling atmosphere to a sequence that's scripted tighter than Abbott & Costello's Who's on First, and it just doesn't work. The two forms don't really mesh, and you get the feeling Toback only had twenty good minutes in him to begin with - the rest is like a warm-up, like running in place to get the circulation going. And I hate to sound like an old prude (which I'm far from being), but the nude shower scene is an absolute cheap shot; Neve Campbell is just being exploited here. It has nothing to do with her character or anything else; it's completely gratuitous. But I guess anything goes when you have no material. Minus credits, this thing is barely over an hour and fifteen minutes. It hardly seems worth being made.

There is no need for the box "Contains Spoiler" on this movie because there is no plot to spoil. It's basically a mental rant of characters placed in unlikely situations that leads to an obvious conclusion. I'd say it was like softcore, but even the sex scenes, of which there are way too many for a legitimate movie, are dumb. What little character development there actually is, is completely trite and without depth. Aside from a somewhat questionable performance by Neve Campbell, the film is littered with boring and typical acting by the "not quite making it" crowd. Another triumphantly pointless and boring movie by Toback- hurray!

When Will I Be Loved (2004)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Incredibly bizarre film about a rich slut (Neve Campbell) and her wannabe hustler boyfriend (Fred Weller) who happens to set her up with a rich man (Dominic Chianese) so that they can collect $100,000. Like The Brown Bunny, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who love this film and plenty who hate it. I'm somewhat in the middle but have to lean towards the hate side due to several reasons. This is the type of film where the screenwriter/director thinks he has created the most hip, refreshing and original film and he rubs every scene in the viewers face. Throughout the entire running time the screenplay is full of wannabe smart and hip characters who aren't nearly as hip or as smart as they think. This reflects on the screenplay, which isn't nearly as hip or as smart as it thinks. The director constantly swings the camera as some sort of hip style but once again, it's not hip and it's not stylish. Roger Ebert is one who gave this a full four stars so you can read his review for praise. There are a few good moments including the scene where the rich guy shows up at Campbell's apartment for sex. She questions him and this leads to some interesting moments. The film starts and finishes with Campbell taking a shower and we get to see every inch of her nude body. I suggest you watch these scenes and pretty much skip everything else.

I found Toback's earlier film Black and White mildly diverting, so gave this one a whirl. The scuttlebutt was that this was Neve Campbell's best (and sexiest) performance so far. Well, that much may be true-ish, but the rest of this film is, in places, almost unwatchably bad.

Most of the characters (or should I say caricatures - take the Italian mogul: did anybody find this man even remotely believable?) are without a shred of originality, and in the case of Ford, bear virtually no resemblance to human beings of the sort you or I might actually meet. It may be that his relentless hustling is *intended* to show him as a pathetic individual - but there is a fine line between depicting characters we may not like but in whom we can invest some interest as to their fate; and, as happens in this film, showing people who are irredeemably ghastly, and about whose fate we don't give a toss.

In Black and White, Mike Tyson had a very funny cameo, in which Robert Downey Junior's character tries to seduce him. Here, it looks as if Toback has simply raided his address book and shoehorned as many celebrity cameos as he could into what passes for the plot. Ooh, look, there's Lori Singer! Wow, there's Mike Tyson (again). Ooh, that really is Damon Dash! Toback's own performance as the "hilariously" named cross-cultural enabler is pure smugness in a bottle. The only honest moment is when he confesses to wanting to get into Neve Campbell's knickers. We can only speculate as to whether that is a case of art imitating life.

And Neve Campbell? Yes, she is good in this. She gets some decent dialogue to get her teeth into and delivers it with aplomb. I still think Wild Things is a better showcase for her talent.

The incident towards the end of the film was certainly unexpected; but then again, any idiot can make unexpected things happen in a film. The trick is to work up to it in *some* way. Toback is either incapable of doing this, or simply can't be bothered. The dénouement left me shrugging: so what? Who cares about these cardboard cut-outs?