The
Muse
Rated
PG-13
Opens Friday,
Aug. 27
Hollywood screenwriter Steven Phillips (Albert Brooks) has
a problem. Although he has 17 screenplays and one Oscar nomination
to his credit, and despite having recently received the "Humanitarian
Award" (an award "given to anyone who doesn't win the Oscar"),
the overwhelming consensus in Tinseltown is that Phillips
has lost his edge. His agent thinks so, his colleagues think
so and, even worse, the studios think so. A smarmy Paramount
executive (despicably played by Mark Feuerstein) not only
turns Phillips' latest action script down but also terminates
his three-picture deal. "Possibly writing is something you
shouldn't do any more," he says. Under the circumstances,
this conflict is ironic. With his latest comedy, The Muse,
writer-director Albert Brooks seems to be in the same position
as the protagonist he plays: He, too, has temporarily lost
his edge.
Brooks truly understands comedy as a concept. He realizes
that some of life's funniest moments often derive from pain
and anguish, and his best films are built on that foundation.
The situations in Lost in America, Real Life and
Modern Romance are definitely humorous, but they're
also bleak, packed with excruciating neuroses and, sometimes,
uncomfortable to watch. Like Woody Allen, Brooks makes films
that are amusing but feel like one long therapy session,
with the comedian playing a loose variation on the same
whiny, self-deprecating character in each picture. Unfortunately,
sometimes Brooks' concepts read funnier on paper than on
screen (see Defending Your Life, one of his weaker
films) and his one-note character doesn't always engage
the audience. These are just two of the reasons why The
Muse is the writer-director's first failure in 20 years.
As in all of Brooks' comedies, The Muse attempts
to solve its central conflict with a wonderfully inventive
premise. With no job and a bad case of writer's block ("You
remember the guy in The Shining?," he asks his wife.
"Well, I'm jealous of that!"), Phillips turns to a flourishing
colleague for advice. Jack Warrick (an overtanned, dead-on
Jeff Bridges) tells Steven the secret of his success: He's
been working with a woman named Sarah (Sharon Stone), who
claims to be a real life muse, one of the original daughters
of Zeus. Desperate and looking for any help, Phillips buys
it and eventually convinces Sarah to take him on as a client.
After all, she helped "inspire" hits like The Truman
Show, and has folks like Martin Scorsese and James Cameron
popping up on her doorstep for guidance. Of course, nothing
is without strings in a Brooks film, and Sarah comes with
numerous hangups. She's obnoxious, high-maintenance and
expects her new clients to pay for all of her expenses.
Soon, she's bunking in Phillips' own bedroom. Meanwhile
our frustrated writer can't come up with a third act to
finish the screenplay Sarah has inspired (more irony, since
The Muse's third act is dreadful and silly).
Brooks often populates his films with incredibly irritating
characters (Julie Hagerty's Linda in Lost in America,
Debbie Reynolds' role as Mother), and Sarah is no
exception. She's a walking headache, driving Phillips--and
us--crazy. The problem is that Brooks' characters usually
work as a counterpoint to the insanity. Though he's egotistical
and neurotic, the audience can relate to his problems--and
laugh at them. Here, however, Stephen Phillips is bland,
shallow and as unengaging as every other character. Without
a point of sympathetic reference, The Muse gives
its audience absolutely no one to care about.
But, for all its faults, The Muse's main problem
is its subject matter. Brooks is strongest when he drolly
dissects universal problems. He's able to take everyday
angst (say, the matriarchal suffocation in Mother)
and develop an entire film around it. Here, he take shots
at the most worn out target there is (besides teenagers):
Hollywood. Really, is there a more tired subject than filmmakers
making movies about how awful it is to make movies? Sure,
Brooks adds a new twist with the muse angle, but otherwise
every Hollywood joke has been told and every bitter statement
has been made, and often in more enlightening ways. Barton
Fink tackled screenwriter's block, while The Player
and Contempt nailed Hollywood for its cheap superficiality
years ago. While hardly devoid of laughter, The Muse
aims low and easy, relying on pithy one-liners rather
than fully developed comic sequences. For the first time,
the comedian looks uninspired.
There's also something unsettling about watching Brooks,
a man who prides himself on his anti-Hollywood stance, gleefully
embracing his own popularity within the community. While
on the surface, Brooks wants to bash everything evil and
trivial about Hollywood, he's actually created a celebrity
jerk-off of sorts. He trots out famous directors like Cameron,
Scorsese and Rob Reiner for brief cameos, as if to say,
"Look who I can get for my film!" Yet for years, in his
films, in interviews and at conferences, Brooks has ridiculed
the types of movies that guys like Reiner and Cameron make.
Brooks surely believes he's made a wry and cynical picture
about Hollywood's lack of creativity and inspiration. But
The Muse reveals that this time the problem isn't
with the studios, but with Brooks' own floundering. His
once-cutting wit here feels dull. Get Zeus on the line--Brooks
really does need a muse.
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Willamette Week | originally
published August 25,
1999
|
