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Mr Jealousy
Threat advisory: High - High risk of entertaining activities
Movie propaganda
The highly anticipated follow-up to Noah Baumbach's acclaimed debut Kicking and screaming, Mr Jealousy is a buoyant romance bursting with rich and vital characters. Once again Baumbach serves up his own very special brand of screwball comedy and an exuberant exploration of love and friendship. The subject this time is that potentially darkest of emotions, sexual jealousy - a lethal minefield which the young writer/director bravely traverses with tenderness, wisdom and hilarious wit.
It all begins when Lester Grimm is fifteen: he chickens out of his first goodnight kiss and soon finds his date kissing another man. Lester's romantic future is marked for life...
Starring Eric Stoltz, Annabella Sciorra, Carlos Jacott, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Chris Eigeman.
Intelligence analyst
Special Agent Matti
Theatrical report
Damaged goods being dragged kicking and screaming towards reality.
It's funny to watch people nurturing their neuroses, isn't it? I do it with my friends all the time. If course, I don't have any neuroses myself, so it's easy for me to cut through the chaff and find the kernels of truth. The only thing that's funnier than all this is watching people reinforcing each other's neuroses.
And guess what? That's what Mr Jealousy is all about. Neurotic young New Yorkers trying to connect in the mayhem that is the 90s. The film wanders through Lester's life as he and his friends and his girlfriends and their ex-boyfriends bounce off each other's inadequacies. It's a really funny, wonderful piece of voyeurism - do you like to watch?
Eric Stoltz carries the film very well, doing that slightly strange boy next door thing that he does so well. The supporting actors each present their characters with living believability. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is especially delightfully uptight, the perfect foil for her boyfriend (Carlos), Lester's best friend.
The dialogue is witty, the situation universal and the neuroses just excessive enough to make the plot interesting. It's in excess that you discover your true selves, I say deeply.
Mr Jealousy is a film for late Baby Boomers and early Generation X-ers, full of 90s wit, love and terror. No roller blades, but watch it anyway.
Security censorship classification
M (Low level coarse language)
Surveillance time
97 minutes (1:37 hours)
Not for public release in Australia before date
Film: Undated May 1999
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