Cons: A movie for the nosy, gossipy, voyeuristic impulse. (Well, _you_ might call that a "Con".)
The Bottom Line: Judging by the commentary track, this is the lowest-budget film I've ever seen (move aside, Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter). It's also smart, charming, unnerving, triumphant, utterly professional... and brilliant.
While Melvin Goes to Dinner is my (and my wife's) 2nd-favorite of the hundred or so movies we've seen this year – I still need to tell y'all about Bully – it's only fair to tell you how target-marketed to us it is. It's a movie for the social-relations voyeurs who loved Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Sex, Lies and Videotape and Richard Linklater's Tape; so target-marketed that even the typically lame-o (and typically semi-accurate) Netflix blurb made me want to see it. I quote:
"When Melvin (Michael Bliedin) and his friends sat down to dinner, film festival audiences went wild. Initially chatting casually, the four soon begin disclosing the kinds of real, raw truths that people can only tell their most intimate friends: their sexual encounters, their dirty secrets, the mean, awful things they do or had done to them. Maura Tierney is spectacular, and Jack Black and David Cross provide hilarious cameos".
You smell the bullcrap there, mind ... and not just the attention lavished onto the cameos instead of the excellent L.A.-based theater actors who carry the film. As the four patiently explain to the drunk, garralous waitress, Melvin only knows Joey (Matt Price), Joey knows Alex (Stephanie Courtney), Alex is the only one who knows Sarah (Annabelle Gurwitch), and none of them have seen each other in months. _Those_ are the people you tell secrets to; they're the people you don't have to hide from.
More often, to be sure, those are the people you talk about sports or the weather with ... and so the first challenge of Bliedin's script is to build in the mix of peer pressure, wine, good feeling, and one-upmanship that it takes to bring these semi-strangers into full revelation mode. I think he succeeds.
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In the original stage play Phyro-Giants – as Cindy and I guessed and the commentary confirmed – the story required almost no blocking. Four people sat around a table, a waitress brought drinks and complaints about her boyfriend, and at one point Sarah went to the bathroom (behind the curtain) and Alex, in loyalty to the female code, went with her.
Melvin director Bob Odenkirk uses the chance to branch out in time and space, giving each character a little scene or six of background to flesh out their motives in the conversation. He has some fun with photographic possibilities (Joey's most important story, for example, is fleshed out with a few well-chosen still photos; Melvin's discomfort at a cell phone conversation is highlighted by jarring cuts). He even, in a well-done Pulp Fiction-esque borrowing, begins with an excerpt from the final, post-dinner scene.
Melvin, the nominal star, is a dork: a big, nervous, curly-haired dork. His sister offers to fire him from his job if that would help; he turns her down, but still blows off work to have the most uncomfortable car sex i've ever witnessed, his girlfriend's head ramming repeatedly into the window as he grunts and thrusts. His other sex scene with her is interrupted near climax by a piercing alarm; he climbs out from under her in resignation, turns off the alarm, and says "You've got to go now, right?" He kind of sets up the dinner, but only because he calls Joey by accident, hitting the wrong name on speed-dial, and then feels bad about not having called any of his friends in four months. And at dinner, his most animated moments are (1) his unhinged joy when discussing his favorite TV show and (2) his moral earnestness when he tells Alex (whom he's known for an hour) that she needs to tell her boyfriend, flat-out, "I'm not attracted to you anymore". Which I agree with, 100% and with equal passion, but I only know that because I'm a dork too.
I also identify in some ways with Joey, the true star of the movie. An articulate, funny-sarcastic, somewhat insecure guy who reminds me in looks and manner of Chandler Bing or Xander Harris, he does the most to move the evening along, because he's the most willing to completely embarrass himself to tell a good story.
Joey also won me completely over to the movie's side with his rant about religion 15 minutes in, which starts with strident logic: "The weakest part of the religious argument is that God never proves his existence. So they invented faith, and this was genius: they say, no, what looks like the weakest part is actually the strongest part!" But it moves from there to flashback about a cute girl (Joey's stories all involve cute girls), one who invited him to spend an evening with "something very important to her": a self-help seminar, a free three-hour lecture to serve as a teaser to a $300 weekend.
We see leader David Cross start with leading questions like "Have any of you ever made a bad decision? Show of hands. Have any of you known you were making a bad decision, and gone ahead and made it anyway?" Joey holds out, the one person refusing to raise his hand. But soon Cross moves onto stuff about how "A few of you, though, I see having doubts. You're thinking hey, my life seems pretty okay, I'm pretty successful – that's what I thought too at first. Let me tell you: you're the ones who need this course the most". Joey tells us, still a bit shaken years later, of realizing how easily he could've bought such a preposterous line. The tie-in to religious faith is clear. But if you hate his point, please don't worry: you'll get your turn too. Melvin Goes to Dinner revels in arguments, not solutions.
That said, Alex's first flashback has her on the airplane into town, being told to turn off her laptop computer; with her seatmate, we see her screensaver flash "This Whore Loves to Party ... This Whore Loves to Party ...". Alex, always shown drinking, eating, or over-gesturing with the cheerleader excitement of one who thinks the evening depends on her, will help steer the stories onto less abstract topics. Once, when I was ten years old and sitting with my Mom at a grown-up party, the conversation at our table lagged in perfect time to hear a man at the next table say, loudly and clearly, "oral sex". I wasn't shocked; just very very curious, especially when Mom wouldn't answer my clarifying questions. The waitress at Melvin's conversation, of course, is older and would be harder to startle. I'm pleased to say the diners are up to the task.
**********
The talk of theology and the talk of sex and porn are hardly disconnected, of course – nor are Melvin's tales of schizophrenic patients or Alex's tales of ghosts. Part of the appeal of Melvin Goes to Dinner is that while maybe none of the characters are very nice people, their conversation brings up a lot of questions about right and wrong, fair and unfair: questions they'd ducked in their conduct until now, and would happily duck again if it wouldn't violate the mood, and the competition for attention.
This may be why, to judge from the DVD's excerpted scenes of Phyro-Giants, the audience treats it as a comedy. Sure, many lines are clever, but I think the laughter is more a way to relieve the steadily ratcheted-up tension. (I only laughed once, because I enjoyed the tension.) And it's certainly why the ending is so great, continuing a mini-trend (existing only in my own head) of great two-syllable last lines to great relationship films. Did you ever get to experience the "Okay" at the end of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the "I know" at the end of Before Sunset? This one's as short, and as perfect.
That's my review. Since more than one of the dilemmas revolve around adultery, I do want to take a moment to stand on a soapbox. (Figuratively, that is; my literal knee has been bent at a weird angle as I write this and I'm going to wobble next time I really stand.)
This is too much information, of course, but Cindy and I have agreed that our marriage wouldn't be harmed if either of us had an affair. This does not mean we plan to pick up strangers at parties or bars. But we treat our agreement as a safety valve, available if ever needed. We accept that people in even a happy couple might, now and then, feel desire for someone _other_ than the single heroic person they've also drafted to choose house decorations with, care for cats or kids with, share work complaints with, host dinner parties with, and basically do a zillion things with that have nothing to do with being sexy. This is normal, logical. Why assume it's bad?
Cindy and I do have a lot of mutual trust to fall back on. She knows no other girl is gonna make me forget I'm with someone way smarter, prettier, and more competent than I could ever have expected. I know no handsome lad will salvage whatever lack of self-esteem keeps her here with me. Still, in the less-ideal contexts of the movie, we see the stress that the ideal of monogamy produces – the way hasty, destructive decisions are made because every desire must be met with an either/or, black-or-white decision.
For that matter, in the commentary, Gurwitch tells us her first marriage was done in the by same issue. Adultery has triggered the end of many bad marriages, perhaps including hers. But it's also triggered the end of way too many happy ones, just because a rule says it's supposed to. The need for monogamy evolved over millions of years in which there was no reliable birth control, and boy did it make perfect sense then. The world is different now. At least, it could be.
That's my big advice, which you'll ignore. Sure, I understand. My small advice is: rent Melvin Goes to Dinner, set in a less idealistic world where normal interesting screw-ups reveal their normal interesting secrets and opinions, while drinking and interrupting each other with great lines. You will, right? Good.
Melvin goes to dinner with three almost complete strangers. The frequency funny, bit also heartfelt conversation goes from dating to sex, top religion...More at HotMovieSale.com
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