moonspinner55 Review of Laurel Canyon

Laurel Canyon (2002)

Terribly unsubtle, with plot points telegraphed far in advance...

[5/10 · 24 January 2007]

Tempers--and libidos!--are bound to flare up when a handsome young first-year resident at a Los Angeles hospital (Christian Bale) and his practicing M. D. girlfriend (Kate Beckinsale) go to stay with his promiscuous, pot-smoking record-producer mother (Frances McDormand) at her home in the Hollywood Hills. Sophomoric drama from writer-director Lisa Cholodenko, who handicaps her already beleaguered script--which sees Los Angeles as Partytown USA--with absolutely no grasp of musical or cultural history. What the filmmaker does have is a fetish for California architecture (with mailboxes piled up outside and buildings flashing by), and yet she treats it all as rustic eye-candy without subtext, so that the ambiance of the milieu nearly becomes irrelevant (this story could take place in Burbank). McDormand gives the film some personality (her straightforward, unhurried and unhindered nature does more for the picture than it does for her), but Bale and Beckinsale look and act like vapid supermodels and the subplot about a rock band trying to get their new record in the can is curiously naïve. ** from ****