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| Elisabeth Moss (Tribeca) |
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Up Phillip is spectacularly-acted, wonderfully-shot
and intelligently-written. But it falls short. It’s not all it can be. Its
perspective is a bit scattered to make this into a great movie. Director Alex Ross Perry
brings out some powerful performances from Jason Schwartzman and Elizabeth
Moss, but the interest fizzles midway through. The pathos of their
self-absorption makes this portrait powerful,
but its lack of focus – thematically and character-wise – waters down its strengths. The relationships
are obtuse and, while that might be the point, Perry's point-of-view becomes befuddled because of it . The movie
is much like its central character: it wants you to like it even though its
hollow interior and dull exterior – played up, at times, to a fault – leaves
you surprisingly empty. And the humor, present at the beginning, is simply gone midway.
Phillip Friedman (Schwartzman)
is a published novelist and cannot connect to a single individual except for
the emotionally-crippled artist Ashley Kane (Moss). The movie is strongest when these two are together. But when Philip leaves to
hang-out with his literary hero Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce) the backbone of Perry's script unravels. Really, there
are many ideas concurrently working out in these vignettes, to the point where neither Ashley’s crippled, self-destructive
nature nor Philip’s hollow narcissism are explored in a compelling enough
manner to justify its length. Pryce is solid, but his character Ike weighs down detracts
from the focus, where out interest originally resided.
Movie lovers of the
world, don’t feel obligated to like this film because of its obvious strengths;
rather, criticize it for not being at the level it needed it to be, and ponderously
wavering in its own head, leaving us scratching our heads and slightly detached. That is why the strengths are frustrating: because this movie should be better. Mr. Perry, re-watch Nicole Holofcener and Woody Allen to better channel the expression of self-centered, bourgeois loneliness. Don’t
let your movies meander, lavishly dressed like a Wes Anderson flick yet flat-footed and clumsy all the same. B-
David's full review is here.