THE GREAT NEW WONDERFUL (2006) **1/2 Maggie Gyllenhaal, Judy Greer, Olympia Dukakis, Jim Gaffigan, Edie Falco, Will Arnett, Tony Shalhoub, Thomas McCarthy, Naseeruddin Shah, Sharat Saxena, Stephen Colbert, Anita Gillette, Dick Latessa (Dir: Danny Leiner)
Hodgepodge coda for a post-9/11 NYC with a fine ensemble lost in the ruins.
In the approach of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 Hollywood has begun a trickling of films reflecting upon its aftermath and the results of that horrific day with some unusual thought processes including the latest incarnation of an ensemble stumbling around in their 'ordinary' lives in spite of an extraordinary cataclysm.
Five segmented story lines interweave in Sept. 2002, a year after the attacks in New York City, focusing on an eclectic group of 'average' New Yorkers:
Emme (Gyllenhaal) is an A-type personality who runs a firm making expensive designer cakes for the hoi polloi and married to an up and coming professional (Arnett), who seems only to desire in achieving the status of her arch-rival in her business, the celebrated Sarah Polsky (Falco), who seems to have a rich, full and envious life that Emme is all but willing to kill for in getting one significant client to cinch her niche in life.
Allison (Greer) and David (McCarthy) are a happily married couple also on the go who are in crisis when their only son is displaying some disturbingly violent behavior with his classmates by 'acting out' his frustrations to their dismay and surprise.
Avi and Satish (Shah and Saxena, respectively) are Indian bodyguards for a visiting dignitary from their homeland who are constantly squabbling amongst themselves while attempting to keep their charge from harm.
Judy Hillerman (Dukakis) is an elderly homemaker whose daily mundane ritual of attending to her retired husband's TV-tray dinners and her artistic talent resurfacing in collage finds an opportunity to change things when she runs into an old schoolmate of hers from back in the day (Latessa).
Sandie (Gaffigan) is a corporate type who has been assigned by his company for mandatory psychiatric evaluation by a passive-aggressive analyst, Dr. Trabulous (Shalhoub), whose sense of humor is to say the least hostile.
Written by Sam Catlin with some insight to how the human tableaux can be in a state of inertia from shock affectively yet somehow we never get a sense if the personalities his characters inhibit were as they were previously to the attacks only adds more frustration when their 'dilemmas' seem to be inconsequential (i.e. no one seems to have lost anyone dear to them) but director Danny Leiner (an unlikely candidate for this sort of film considering the track record of risqué dumb comedies like "Dude, Where's My Car?" and "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle") nonetheless elicits some surprisingly good work from his ensemble especially good are Gyllenhaal whose shallowness masks her inadequacies and Greer has a fine sequence when confronting her son's principal (acidly portrayed with thin-lipped coolness by comedian Colbert) but the real exception to note is Gaffigan, a stand-up comedian who has dabbled on the periphery of film, in his quiet, implosive turn as the one character who may be the most representative for the film as a whole in his pas de deux with the excellent Shalhoub in their one-on-one mind-screwing that perhaps is really the film's linear thread: we all have a breaking point ; just a question of when the time comes.
Hodgepodge coda for a post-9/11 NYC with a fine ensemble lost in the ruins.
In the approach of the fifth anniversary of 9/11 Hollywood has begun a trickling of films reflecting upon its aftermath and the results of that horrific day with some unusual thought processes including the latest incarnation of an ensemble stumbling around in their 'ordinary' lives in spite of an extraordinary cataclysm.
Five segmented story lines interweave in Sept. 2002, a year after the attacks in New York City, focusing on an eclectic group of 'average' New Yorkers:
Emme (Gyllenhaal) is an A-type personality who runs a firm making expensive designer cakes for the hoi polloi and married to an up and coming professional (Arnett), who seems only to desire in achieving the status of her arch-rival in her business, the celebrated Sarah Polsky (Falco), who seems to have a rich, full and envious life that Emme is all but willing to kill for in getting one significant client to cinch her niche in life.
Allison (Greer) and David (McCarthy) are a happily married couple also on the go who are in crisis when their only son is displaying some disturbingly violent behavior with his classmates by 'acting out' his frustrations to their dismay and surprise.
Avi and Satish (Shah and Saxena, respectively) are Indian bodyguards for a visiting dignitary from their homeland who are constantly squabbling amongst themselves while attempting to keep their charge from harm.
Judy Hillerman (Dukakis) is an elderly homemaker whose daily mundane ritual of attending to her retired husband's TV-tray dinners and her artistic talent resurfacing in collage finds an opportunity to change things when she runs into an old schoolmate of hers from back in the day (Latessa).
Sandie (Gaffigan) is a corporate type who has been assigned by his company for mandatory psychiatric evaluation by a passive-aggressive analyst, Dr. Trabulous (Shalhoub), whose sense of humor is to say the least hostile.
Written by Sam Catlin with some insight to how the human tableaux can be in a state of inertia from shock affectively yet somehow we never get a sense if the personalities his characters inhibit were as they were previously to the attacks only adds more frustration when their 'dilemmas' seem to be inconsequential (i.e. no one seems to have lost anyone dear to them) but director Danny Leiner (an unlikely candidate for this sort of film considering the track record of risqué dumb comedies like "Dude, Where's My Car?" and "Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle") nonetheless elicits some surprisingly good work from his ensemble especially good are Gyllenhaal whose shallowness masks her inadequacies and Greer has a fine sequence when confronting her son's principal (acidly portrayed with thin-lipped coolness by comedian Colbert) but the real exception to note is Gaffigan, a stand-up comedian who has dabbled on the periphery of film, in his quiet, implosive turn as the one character who may be the most representative for the film as a whole in his pas de deux with the excellent Shalhoub in their one-on-one mind-screwing that perhaps is really the film's linear thread: we all have a breaking point ; just a question of when the time comes.