more news:  chicagotribune.com chicagosports.com  classifieds:  jobs cars homes apartments shopping  cities:  baltimore orlando
House - 120x60
Reader Reviews
Read about your favorite spots and events.
Home | Restaurants | Bars & Clubs | Events | Movies | Music | Dating | Theater | Critics' reviews | TV   
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060209071328/http://adserver.trb.com/event.ng/Type=click&amp;FlightID=476405&amp;AdID=200537&amp;Custom=imax&amp;TargetID=11404&amp;Segments=164,216,236,408,529,579,598,1599,2054,2166,3025,5140,5539,5933,7432,7459,54871&amp;Targets=503,58639,2813,8515,11404&amp;Values=34,46,51,63,77,84,90,93,100,110,150,287,291,294,328,331,433,435,448,493,591,998,1016,1093,1122,1136,1171,1436,1606,1617,1725,1816,1872,1887,1888,1917,1919,1978,1984,1986,2091,2281,2283,2384,2511,2515,2748,2794,2795,2823,2856,2971,3051,3061,3062,3088,3113,3117,3133&amp;RawValues=USERAGENTID%2Cia_archiver&amp;Redirect=http://www.imax.com/chicago" target="_top"><img src="https://web.archive.org/web/20060209071328im_/http://adserver.trb.com/ads/chicago/imax/rovingmars/mars_leader0206.jpg" width="728" height="90" border="0"></a>
 
 
find it fast
Search the entire site.
  
 
 
 
find a movie
 
Movie search (choose one):
Pick a theater:
  
or Pick a movie:
  
or Pick a city:
  
or enter a zip code:

Within
 
Movie search

Powered by Zap2it
 
2005's best movies

Our fast-Paised take on the Top 10 films of the year.
More Top 10 lists:
Michael Wilmington
Michael Phillips
Robert K. Elder
Allison Benedikt
 
fast-paised film

Quick reviews of:
• Big Momma's House 2
• When a Stranger Calls
• Something New
• Imagine Me and You
• The World's Fastest Indian
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
• Going Shopping
• Annapolis
• Nanny McPhee
• Bubble
• The New World
• Last Holiday
• Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
• The Real Dirt on Farmer John
• Hostel
• Glory Road
• Tristan and Isolde
• Cache
• Rumor Has It...
• Match Point
• The Matador
• Casanova
• Munich
• The Ringer
• Gilles' Wife
• Fun w/Dick and Jane
• Cheaper/Dozen 2
• King Kong
• Brokeback Mountain
• Memoirs of a Geisha
• The Producers
• Syriana
• Chronicles of Narnia
• 39 Pounds of Love
• Aeon Flux
• First Descent
• The Kid & I
• Rent
• The Ice Harvest
• Just Friends
• Harry Potter
• Walk the Line
• Bee Season
• Squid and the Whale
• The Weather Man
• Shopgirl
Plus interviews:
• Sanaa Lathan tries something new
• Albert Brooks looks for comedy
• Hear from the stars of "Glory Road"
• What scares "Hostel" director Eli Roth?
• Our interview with Cameron Crowe
• Celebrity stylist Phillip Bloch turns to acting
• Claire Danes and Jason Schwartzman
 
more movies

coming soon


 
movie review search
Read reviews of films from 2002-2005
Search for a film

 
movie reviews
Movies in bold received 4 stars.
39 Pounds Love
A Good Woman
Annapolis
Ballets Russes
Bee Season
Be Here to Love Me
Breakfast on Pluto
Brokeback Mountain
Bubble
Cache
Cafe Lumiere
Capote
Casanova
Cheaper by the Dozen 2
Chicken Little
Christmas in the Clouds
Derailed
Doom
Duane Hopwood
Elizabethtown
Ellie Parker
Emmanuel's Gift
End of the Spear
Far Side of the Moon
First Descent
Fun with Dick and Jane
Gay Sex in the '70s
Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Gilles' Wife
Glory Road
God's Sandbox
Going Shopping
Good Night, and Good Luck.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Hoodwinked
Imagine Me and You
In Her Shoes
Innocence
Innocent Voices
Jarhead
Just Friends
King Kong
Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
Kung Fu Hustle
Last Holiday
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
Machuca
Match Point
Memoirs of a Geisha
Mrs. Henderson Presents
Munich
Nanny McPhee
Never Been Thawed
Nine Lives
North Country
Paradise Now
Pride & Prejudice
Prime
Protocols of Zion
Pulse
Regular or Super: Views on Mies van der Rohe
Rent
Roving Mars
Rumor Has It...
Saraband
Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
Saw 2
Shopgirl
Something New
Stay
Syriana
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Dying Gaul
The Family Stone
The Ice Harvest
The Kid & I
The Legend of Zorro
The Matador
The New World
The Passenger
The Producers
The Real Dirt on Farmer John
The Ringer
The Squid and the Whale
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
The War Within
The White Countess
The World's Fastest Indian
Transamerica
Tristan and Isolde
Ushpizin
Walk the Line
Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Where the Truth Lies
Wolf Creek
Yours, Mine and Ours
Zathura


 
 

movies
 E-mail story   |   Printer Friendly


Movie review: 'Duane Hopwood'

 
rating (out of four)


You do the review
Tell us what you think of "Duane Hopwood."

Hilarious fight scene. Aldo is a trip!
Submitted by: Dan
3:52 PM CST, November 28, 2005
It was put together well great scenery shots and funny fight scene with Aldo
Submitted by: Vince
2:38 PM CST, November 27, 2005

Make a night of it
Find:
Recommended dining
Recommended bars




If David Schwimmer has a real physical treasure on screen, it's that sensitive shlub mug propped atop his lanky jock's body. Schwimmer exploited his basset-hound melancholy to the max as "Friends'" Ross Geller, and his face, both funny and gloomy, also stands him in fine stead in his second-tier but affecting new movie, "Duane Hopwood."

If you liked "Friends," you felt for Ross, even at his most absurd and annoying. That's also part of the way you react to Schwimmer's Duane Hopwood—though this character has a lot more edge and tension

So does the film. It's a mixed but basically likable little indie picture from the last Sundance Film Festival, written and directed by Matt Mulhern, an ex-actor whose first film, "Walking to the Waterline," had Duane as a secondary character, but no Schwimmer in the cast. Set in a November-bound Atlantic City landscape of casinos, boardwalk and dingy frame houses, Mulhern's movie shows us the city off-season, going cold and gray, while title character Duane's life seemingly falls apart.

Like the recent "The Weather Man," it's a portrait of a failed family man in the winter of his discontent, and at first glance, it's wind-whipped and sad.

But it's not necessarily an unremitting downer. Schwimmer plays Duane as an affable, heavy-drinking Caesar's Palace pit boss and divorced dad of two. The sight of this dude, haggard but determined, loping along with a jock's lanky gait and desperate pseudo-confidence creates a sympathy that tends to survive all his worst behavior. There's comedy both in his blotto alienation from the boardwalk world and from reality itself and his absurd conviction that he'll get back together with wife Linda (Janeane Garofalo). Schwimmer—perhaps because of his TV familiarity but also because he's connecting to this role—keeps us on his side.

Yet as he tries desperately to keep his life on track, despite a taste for booze and a horrendous temper, something both comical and scary keeps welling up in Duane: a dark cloud of helpless fury when he disrupts his best friend Anthony's lounge standup comedy debut (Anthony is played with comic gusto by real-life standup guy Judah Friedlander) or jeopardizes access to his small daughters Mary and Kate (played in fine, human performances by Ramya Pratt and Rachel Covey) by a DUI arrest and by waving a stick at Linda's new lover.

That's the heart of the movie, which is quite smart about the way lives can unravel but not as convincing about the ways to knit them together again.

Just as Schwimmer's Duane has a sweetness that keeps peeking through his glum, booze-fueled torpor and rage, Garofalo tempers her usual biting sarcasm with motherly, wifely concern. Duane's new inamorata, Gina (Susan Lynch), gives the movie some fleshy grit; Jerry Grayson as Carl, Duane's kindly wise guy boss, is perfect; and the two actors who play Duane's somewhat old-maidish neighbors, Steve (Steven H. Schirripa) and Fred (elfin TV talk show legend Dick Cavett) give the film some comic airiness.

It's not a terrific movie; in fact it often looks a little frowsy around the edges, just like Duane. Writer-director Mulhern is better at some things than others. "Duane Hopwood" is written well, but, even though the cinematographer is Mauricio Rubinstein of "Before Night Falls," it's visualized almost too mundanely.

Still, thanks to the actors and the way the movie lets them loose, it's often funny or moving at all the right moments. Mulhern is an ex-actor, and he's very good with the other actors: casting them right, getting them to relax into their roles, playing with and against their strengths. For example, many members of his cast—Schwimmer, Garofalo, Friedlander and Cavett—are comedians or comic actors, while Schirripa was an entertainment director booking Las Vegas comedy acts.

Thanks to all of them, the movie becomes a comedic hard-case, soft-heart Jersey take on sadness and alienation. Viewed from the right angle, those can be rich, funny subjects.

mwilmington@tribune.com

----

'Duane Hopwood'

Directed and written by Matt Mulhern; photographed by Mauricio Rubinstein; edited by Tom McArdle; production designed by Benjamin Conable; music by Michael Rohayton; produced by Lemore Syvan, Marc Turtletaub, David Friendly. An IFC Films release; opens Friday. Running time: 1:23. MPAA rating: R (for language).

Duane Hopwood - David Schwimmer

Linda - Janeane Garofalo

Anthony - Judah Friedlander

Gina - Susan Lynch

Fred - Dick Cavett

Steve - Steven R. Schirripa





 
metromix.com



Advertising Information
Home  Copyright & terms of service  Privacy policy  Subscribe  Customer service  Archives  Advertise
  metromix.com