Mostly caught up on the potential Oscar nominees, Jack and I enjoyed this refreshing medical comedy about an arrogant Harvard-educated intern, a doctor/stand-up comic, and his girlfriend. Brian White (arrogant car salesman Marcus on TNT's Men of a Certain Age) plays the intern, Zoe Saldana (Uhura in Star Trek, Neytiri in Avatar) the girlfriend, and Wood Harris (new to me, he's been in a number of TV shows and movies) the doctor/comic. We have no idea why it took five years to get released (it was originally titled The Ways of All Flesh--good decision to chuck that name for a comedy). It's no accident this premiered on MLK weekend: though director/writer Dennis Cooper (producer/writer on Miami Vice (1986-87), Chicago Hope (1994-95), and a few more) is white, the cast is predominantly not, with cameos by Jasmine Guy (A Different World (1987-1993), singer Mya, Ed Asner (I wrote in my post on Up that he had about 200 acting credits--now it's 272!), and the hilarious Marla Gibbs (The Jeffersons (1975-1985), 227 (1985-1990), more), among others. The beach location shots (the movie takes place in Florida) have an interesting color saturation.
Four of the eight other people in the theatre with us loved it, laughing uproariously. The other four were quiet, but they were even older than we are and maybe they couldn't understand it all. This is not on netflix's radar screen as a forthcoming DVD, but is playing all around the country, as listed on its official site. Completely suitable for TV if you don't catch it on the big screen, it's pretty fun (83% of audience members agree, while all three critics on rottentomatoes hated it).
No comments:
Post a Comment