Fast Food Fast Women

Rating:
Summary: Sparkling
Review: ... I have to write about this glorious film as the average rating is way below acceptable. I saw it twice in one week, living in Greece this spring. This is an unusual, refreshing film about Bella, an unusual mid-30's NY woman, who refuses to live typically and a whole set of Big Apple characters she interacts with who share her life and her free spirit. How can you not adore a woman who throws her perfumed just-out-of-the-tub lush towels out the window to tantalize and warm the hobos under her apartment, a woman who still cares for her unkind older lover whom the camera has no sympathy for, and who herself has an elegant compassion for the colourful characters she waits on in her diner workplace or who interact with them? These include the exhibitionist peep show intellectual, the older guy with the shyness of an adolescent, as well as the taxi driver/closet writer and young father who is overawed by Bella's unique outlook and femininity, and you should be itching to know about the fantastical 5-D fairy tale outcome to a chance confrontation in the heroine's NY life. I can't wait for the video...when's it coming out?

Rating:
Summary: Pleasantly surprised.
Review: I hadn't read anything about this movie, and only went after I walked out of Amores Perros and needed another movie to see. The name is the worst thing about this movie. It's well acted and whenever it is in danger of getting schmalzy, it picks right up with some off-beat humor. The movie does a great job of developing many characters, and I really liked all of them.

Rating:
Summary: An experience better avoided.
Review: I've seen a lot of films that combine to create the cinematic part of the New York mythology - sad, comic, tragic, endearing, every sort. Fast Food, Fast Women is none of these. It's plain weird with almost no redeeming qualities.

Anna Thomson(Levin) was good as Kollek's Sue,in the film about a strange human being coming under in the megapolis, losing all hopes and opportunities to get her life straight. The actress's extraterrestrial looks and inexplicable, abrupt gestures just augmented the tragedy of failing to fit into the city life, the tragedy of someone different and deeply disturbed.

This time the Kollek's muse had to look endearing on her quest for happiness. With almost all of Sue's mannerisms and abruptness intact, Anna Levine tries to impersonate the most popular waitress in a diner, an (almost) easy-going 35-year old self-reliant woman who thinks of a marriage and motherhood, the loving and lovable Bella. Sorry, I am not buying that.

She is just the wrong actress for that part, and the part itself is underdeveloped, the whole script has that lets-see-where-we’ll-end-up quality.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the film is the abundance of inter-generational relationships: the man in his early thirties takes to bed the 66-year old(!) woman, the young and fabulous... dancer takes interest in the lustful old codger who is (obviously) very far from being a millionaire – which could have made it believable, the central character plans to marry the very senior lover. It all looks as the pathology to me, and the film is full of that!

What was that – a “serious” director having his try with the romantic comedy? Or just reacting to the new trend of making the “sweeping human dramas with a lot of seemingly disjointed plotlines”, something Magnolian?

Anyway, the result is barely watchable and mildly disgusting.

Rating:
Summary: Louise Lasser does it again!!!
Review: Louise Lasser is as brilliantly funny in this movie as she was in Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman over 25 years ago. Although she has a supporting role, she fills the screen with her familiar style of comedy and sweetness. I recommend this film just because of her.

Rating:
Summary: I found it kind of strange... and not in a good way..
Review: Normally, i like these kinds of movies, multiple characters who are all very different and weird or out there.. but I don't know.. i guess i never really got into this film completely.

First of all, I could never get past the looks of the main character. Normally, Im sort of sickened by those movies who have to have a beautiful heroine--and i don't know if Bella was supposed to be beautiful or not. She looked as if she was LA beautiful, but not really. She basically looked like a walking plastic surgery patient. Full blown lips, she must have had a face lift (it was distracting cause it looked like she had a difficult time talking) really skinny, really tall, with inflated breasts. I didn't understand, but her looks were distracting to me..

Another thing was that the May/December relationships in the movie were all over the place. I don't disagree with them, and i don't deny that they are out there, but it seems that's all there were! Bella was involved in an older married man, her boyfriend was sleeping with a 65 year old woman, and a regular at the diner started dating a dancer half his age.. I guess it would have made more sense to me if they had relationships across the map, not just older/younger ones.

I saw it in the LA weekly and there was a quote saying "What Friends would be like if they really lived in New York" I don't know about that.. it wasn't hilariously funny and the characters weren't ones that you fell in love with. It jumped around too much and some scenes had no point to them. Like when Bella undresses talking on the phone to her mother and a young boy stands outside watching her. It could have done just as well with her on the phone. I guess what im saying is that certain scenes didn't really go anywhere. But, there was some light humor and interesting parts.. maybe just wait for the rental?

Rating:
Summary: this was really good
Review: The video cover said this is like the show "Friends if it actually were in New York" -- except no one is really friends with anyone. That said, it follows the interesting path of Bella, a diner waitress approaching her 35th birthday who has been in an affair with a married man since she was 23. (Bella is way skinny and attractive in that guppy-faced way most 1990s models had, but then it's an independent film.) Also no one ever dates anyone their own age. That's fine but EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in the entire movie??? Please.

The loneliness in an urban space, coupled with ther fact that you actually know a lot of people, you just are not close to them, is very true. the stuttering streetwalker from Poland is an especially gripping charcater. The fact that the elderly gentleman Seymour wants to have coffee with Wanda from the live girl show and treat her to an old-fashioned date is way trite.

But what happens to Bella is interesting, varied and will hold your attention to the end. You end up feeling good by the time the closing credits roll.

Rating:
Summary: this was really good
Review: The video cover said this is like the show "Friends if it actually were in New York" -- except no one is really friends with anyone. That said, it follows the interesting path of Bella, a diner waitress approaching her 35th birthday who has been in an affair with a married man since she was 23. (Bella is way skinny and attractive in that guppy-faced way most 1990s models had, but then it's an independent film.) Also no one ever dates anyone their own age. That's fine but EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in the entire movie??? Please.

The loneliness in an urban space, coupled with ther fact that you actually know a lot of people, you just are not close to them, is very true. the stuttering streetwalker from Poland is an especially gripping charcater. The fact that the elderly gentleman Seymour wants to have coffee with Wanda from the live girl show and treat her to an old-fashioned date is way trite.

But what happens to Bella is interesting, varied and will hold your attention to the end. You end up feeling good by the time the closing credits roll.

Rating:
Summary: Wooden, 2-Dimensional and Slow
Review: This movie was filled with stereotypes and characters that just didn't make me care. The editing was self-indulgent and slow and there were several scenes that should have ended up on the cutting room floor. It is an uncomfortable movie with little warmth and an overdose of angst. The quirks that they tried to work in for the characters to make them human were very contrived and made me conscious I was watching a movie rather than allowing me to get involved in the story and characters as people. The actors did their best - but couldn't overcome the flaws in directing, editing and story line.