She's Funny That Way (12A.)
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
Starring Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Rhys Ifans, Kathryn Hahn, Will Forte and Jennifer Aniston. 93 mins
She's Funny That Way seeks to reintroduce us to two things that were massive in the seventies: farce and Peter Bogdanovich. Now clearly farce is a theatrical form that pre-dates the seventies, but it did seem disproportionately prevalent back then – Fawlty Towers, Pink Panther, Brain Rix.
In this age where comedy emerges gradually and unlaughtracked out of character and situation we have largely disowned the farce. Good job – all that running around making up improbable lies got to be tiresome after a while. This though is a defiantly retro piece of farce, set in the New York theatre world where stage director Wilson's emotional and professional life gets very complicated after spending a night with a hooker/ aspiring actress (Poots) and discovering that in New York everybody knows everybody else and everything is connected.
It doesn't break you in gently. Right from the start it comes at you with with mixed up hotel room numbers, people hiding in bathrooms, wild coincidences and frantic unreasonable behaviour. Hackles instinctively rise but after a few minutes start to subside with the arrival of Aniston as a wholly unprofessional psychoanalyst. It's the definitely the plum role but Aniston (who looks like she's morphing into Stockard Channing) is so funny in her early scenes she breaks you into the film and you allow yourself to be carried along by the restless, sweet natured silliness of it all.
Bogdanovich has spent four decades scratching around trying to recapture the acclaim of his early films and here gets a career reinvention thanks to Wes Anderson and Noah Baubach who executive produce. This won't get him back in the big time but it gives him some self respect.
She's Funny That Way (12A.)
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich.
Starring Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Rhys Ifans, Kathryn Hahn, Will Forte and Jennifer Aniston. 93 mins
She's Funny That Way seeks to reintroduce us to two things that were massive in the seventies: farce and Peter Bogdanovich. Now clearly farce is a theatrical form that pre-dates the seventies, but it did seem disproportionately prevalent back then – Fawlty Towers, Pink Panther, Brain Rix.
In this age where comedy emerges gradually and unlaughtracked out of character and situation we have largely disowned the farce. Good job – all that running around making up improbable lies got to be tiresome after a while. This though is a defiantly retro piece of farce, set in the New York theatre world where stage director Wilson's emotional and professional life gets very complicated after spending a night with a hooker/ aspiring actress (Poots) and discovering that in New York everybody knows everybody else and everything is connected.
It doesn't break you in gently. Right from the start it comes at you with with mixed up hotel room numbers, people hiding in bathrooms, wild coincidences and frantic unreasonable behaviour. Hackles instinctively rise but after a few minutes start to subside with the arrival of Aniston as a wholly unprofessional psychoanalyst. It's the definitely the plum role but Aniston (who looks like she's morphing into Stockard Channing) is so funny in her early scenes she breaks you into the film and you allow yourself to be carried along by the restless, sweet natured silliness of it all.
Bogdanovich has spent four decades scratching around trying to recapture the acclaim of his early films and here gets a career reinvention thanks to Wes Anderson and Noah Baubach who executive produce. This won't get him back in the big time but it gives him some self respect.
