Review: 'The Real Blonde' sexy, but still dumb

March 28, 1998
Web posted at: 5:42 p.m. EST (2242 GMT)

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- Some people got a kick out of them, but I think indie filmmaker Tom DiCillo's first two movies, "Johnny Suede" and "Living In Oblivion," wavered in that no man's land between really bad and not all that good.

"Living in Oblivion" (sporting, as it does, a couple of satisfactory chuckles) isn't as lousy as the first one, but those chuckles weren't enough to distract me from the fact that it mostly lies there like a dead fish. I was surprised, then, that DiCillo's third offering, last year's quickly forgotten "Box of Moonlight," was a bit cloying at times but still a very enjoyable piece of work.

In my review of that film I confessed I was developing high hopes for DiCillo. He had unexpectedly evolved, over the course of a couple of cheap films, from a hipster wannabe to some sort of camera-wielding Kurt Vonnegut. His dialogue was sharp, the characters inventive (if not downright loopy), and he suddenly knew how to goose the story-telling a little bit when the pace started to flag.

Now comes his fourth movie, "The Real Blonde," and, for whatever reason, he's back at square one.

Or, at best, square two. This is yet another comedy of modern sexual manners, but the fact that two or three of these things are released every month isn't really a problem.

Enter, a struggling New York actor

There are as many ways to deal with sexuality as there are breathing people, so I'm convinced that decent writers should be able to do something of value with the topic. The trouble is that DiCillo can't seem to make up his mind what topic he's actually dealing with. He sets up a banquet table full of characters, then proceeds to do little more than pick at the food.

"The Real Blonde" movie trailer 1 minute, 20 second VXtreme video
"The Real Blonde" movie clip
1.8 M / 34 sec. / 240x180 QuickTime movie

Matthew Modine stars (poorly) as Joe, a struggling New York City actor with a huge chip on his shoulder. Joe's got it out for casting directors who want him to appear in work that he feels is beneath his talent, so he winds up infuriating them and not working at all.

He and his wife, Mary (DiCillo regular Catherine Keener), argue a lot about whether they should have children and why their formerly passionate sex life is now on the downswing. It's all pretty rote stuff, and the two leads don't do much to make it any more enlightening.

Mary is a fashion magazine makeup artist by day. And one of the film's many unimaginative tangents deals with the love life of a gorgeous model named Sahara (Bridgette Wilson), who's as beautiful as they come and can actually act a little.

Sahara has had a hot one-night-stand with Joe's piggish actor buddy, Bob (Maxwell Caufield), and she spends the majority of the movie pining for him to return to her bed while he looks for the ultimate object of his sexual obsessions -- a "real blonde." Or, more precisely, one whose hair color doesn't come from a bottle.

One good look at the near-staggering Sahara renders this entire subplot faintly ridiculous, but I was willing to suspend my disbelief in the hope there would be a worthy payoff. No such luck. Bob eventually does have a fling with a "real blonde," a hot-to-trot actress played by Darryl Hannah (type-cast as a blonde, although not necessarily as an actress). But he ends up humiliating himself in the process.

Dumb and dumber

At the beginning of the movie, it's pointed out that people seem to be getting more and more stupid as time goes by, and DiCillo has certainly nailed that trait. None of these characters seems to be functioning more than a few steps beyond high school level, and it gets rather aggravating after a while. In fact, Modine's Joe seems to revel in his dumbness.

I've never understood Modine's popularity (Has a lesser actor ever worked with so many huge directors?), and his ineffectual line readings torpedo nearly every one of his scenes this time around.

But at least his scenes seem to belong in the movie.

Most of DiCillo's situations just skim the surface, or else appear because of a tenuous connection to male/female sexual relations. This includes Keener's sessions at a self-defense class led by a lecherous Denis Leary. Does Leary ever sleep?

He and Steve Buscemi, who also appears in the movie, are becoming the Jack Warden and Charles Durning of the 1990s. You can't get away from them. In the past two weeks alone I've put up with Leary in "Love Walked In," "Wide Awake" and this one. And next week I'll be seeing him in something called "Suicide Kings." Take a cigarette break, Denis! Or just choose better scripts.

This one is a huge disappointment, hampered, as it is, by an almost too conventional game plan.

DiCillo displays an entertaining bent towards the bizarre in some of his better work (Remember the reversal of time sequences in "Box of Moonlight?") but what we've got here is a watered-down Woody Allen movie with several weak actors and several more weak scenes.

Better luck next time, Tom, and don't be afraid to get a little bit wiggy. If you want to make it a blonde wig, feel free.

"The Real Blonde" is all about sex, but you don't see all that much of it. There's profanity and a lot of slinky, partially clothed fashion models, both male and female. Unfortunately, parodies of shallowness can be shallow themselves, and this one falls into that trap. Rated R. 107 minutes.

---

 

---

Sound off on our message boards & chat

© 1998 Cable News Network, Inc.
A Time Warner Company
All Rights Reserved.

Terms under which this service is provided to you.
Read our privacy guidelines.