A Hit and a Miss
I’m a huge Janeane Garofalo fan; and I’ve never made a secret of it. After clearing a lot of stuff off my to-do list, I managed to sit down with a double feature, The Truth About Cats and Dogs and The Matchmaker.
Usually, I’m not one for romantic comedies, and The Matchmaker reminded me why. It’s painfully predictable, not very well written, and you could plug any actor or actress into any role, and have the same movie. It didn’t really make good use of Garofalo’s talent, although Dennis Leary did a good job as an unadulterated scumbag. I recognized David Kelly (Michael O’Sullivan in Waking Ned Devine) in a small supporting role, but he really didn’t have very much to work with. Skip it; you can see a better version of the same thing a dozen times over, I’m sure.
The Truth About Cats and Dogs, on the other hand, really captured my attention. Essentially, it’s a gender-role-reversed, modernized Cyrano, with Garofalo as the lead character. Unlike the Matchmaker, I cannot imagine anyone else in that part. And Uma Thurman gets to do some real acting, as opposed to standing around looking pretty, as she does in a lot of films. However, what really fascinated me was what reversing the gender roles does to the story, even in a modern setting. I found it worth watching, just for that.
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January 28th, 2004 at 11:07 pm
Ooh, thanks for reminding me which movie that was! I saw “The Truth About Cats and Dogs” in the discount bin the other day - just saw the spine and was thinking it’s the one with the talking animals, so I didn’t bother digging it out. Now that I’m remebering what it’s about, I’m tempted to go back and see if they still have it - it’s a classic Garofalo character.