In the Soup

Rating:
Summary: "Every great artist had to suffer a little."
Review: Adolfo Rollo (Steve Buscemi) is flat broke and the rent is due. He has only one precious possession to sell--and that is a 500 plus page film script of his epic "Unconditional Surrender." Adolfo places a 'for sale' advertisement in the paper, and someone responds. Adolfo meets the prospective purchaser Joe (Seymour Cassel) in his run-down hotel room. Adolfo wants $200 for the script, but Joe gives him $1,000 and offers to get funding to make the film. Now since Joe makes the offer in his underwear--without even bothering to read the script--it's obvious that something is wrong here.

"In the Soup" is a wildly bizarre comedy--there's not a normal character in the entire film. Jennifer Beals plays Angelica--Adolfo's prickly neighbour, and she has a few problems with immigration. Adolfo has a giant crush on Angelica, and wants to put her in his film. His relationship with Angelica is complicated by her bizarre, jealous, obnoxious French husband, Gregoire (Stanley Tucci). Adolfo's landlords are the singing Bafardi brothers, the owners of Bafardi's liquor. And then there are a couple of nudist game show hosts. Amidst all this madness and mayhem, Joe attempts to get funding for Adolfo's incredibly rotten film. Joe and his psychotic brother, Skip have some illegal methods to get the money.

I read several professional reviews of this film that stated that it was not funny. I must say that "In the Soup" was one of the funniest films I've seen in a long time. For the first half of the film, I laughed practically non-stop. After about the halfway point, the film briefly lost some of its humour and took on a more serious tone, but then the humour quickly swung back into motion. Autobiographical events in director's Alexandre Rockwell's life inspired the story. Rockwell isn't too well known in America, but he also directed "The Wrong Man" story in "Four Rooms." "In the Soup" is inspired, original, wickedly funny, bizarre, and quite fantastic. Adolfo's life is going nowhere, and then he meets the unstoppable Joe. Joe is one of those people you never forget--although you can't quite fathom him either. Steve Buscemi as the loser Adolfo is marvelous. He seems to have a knack for these sorts of roles, but it's Seymour Cassel's film all the way. "In the Soup" could well become a cult classic, and it deserves a much wider audience--displacedhuman

Rating:
Summary: "Clove Oil? What are you, a salad?"
Review: The title to this review is one of my favorite movie lines ever, EVER. This movie came out right before Steve Buscemi had a part in literally every movie that came out for 2 straight years. As cool as he is, I must admit I got a little over-Buscemi'd there for a while. This is one of my favorite roles he's done but the main reason I have always remebered this film is Seymour Cassel. His role as the fatherly, mysterious and awesomely spontaneous gansgter is pure freakin' genious. I've yet to see him in a role I didn't like but this has got to be one of his best. Another classic Seymour Cassel line: "20 minutes, what are they gonna do, read it in brail?" You'll just have to see it but trust me, if you even remotely enjoy films by Hal Hartley, Jim Jarmusch and the like, you will love this film.

Rating:
Summary: Great wacky comedy
Review: With a stellar cast including indie film fave (sorry for the chintzy language!) Steve Buscemi, Seymour Cassell, Stanley Tucci, Will Patton, Carol Kane, and filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Alexandre Rockwell's In the Soup takes the tried and true tale of a guy wanting to make a film and manages to make this story decidedly fresh and original.

Seymour Cassell's Joe is a consummate con man who knows exactly how to squeeze, steal, and/or cajole money out of a whole plethora of situations. Joe the slickster with a sexy Asian girlfriend is a perfect match for Steve Buscemi's close-to-broke Adolfo the intellectual bumbler (who dreams of his neighbor Jennifer Beals' Latina Angela), whose 450 page film script--Unconditional Surrender--sends Joe into a rapture of delight at the prospect of financing a real film. Of course the way Joe raises the dough to make the film is not exactly, shall we say, kosher.

The juxtaposition of naivete, dream, imagination, and petty crime, along with Will Patton's menacing hemophiliac brother and Stanley Tucci's French ex-husband should be seen to be believed. This is one film that truly deserves to be on DVD. As of this writing (August 2003), it ain't. A shame.

A great picker-uppper, a lot of fun, and an all around hoot. Put In the Soup on your shelf. You won't be sorry.