'Slums' Can't Pick Itself Out of the Trash

June 12, 1998

Showings:
June 21 - Colonial Promenade 5, 9:30pm

Movies about the 1970's: these days they're popping up faster than you can say Quentin Tarrantino. Boogie Nights. The Ice Storm. The Last Days of Disco. The up-coming 54 and Velvet Goldmine. Tacky furniture, gas-guzzling cars, large-collared shirts, gaudy music. At their best, like last year's phenomenal and strongly overlooked The Ice Storm, you get a depiction of a time in which every facet reflects the emptiness and confusion of its people. At their worst, you get Boogie Nights, an overly long mess of a movie that disguises originality with setting and artistic merit with length. (Yes, I guess that's what the seventies was all about, but still.... If I wanted something as overwrought as Freebie and the Bean, I would have stayed at home and watched cable TV.)

Tamara Jenkins' Slums of Beverly Hills falls into the latter category. It doesn't stroke its director's ego as much Boogie Nights did, and it's not nearly as long, but its narrative is just as messy. The film is a series of vignettes, many of them predictable in their outcomes (like Boogie Nights), thrown into a whole that barely holds a narrative structure.

What's really disheartening about Slums is that it's not too far from being a good movie. It just needs some serious fine tuning. The performances are all fine, for the most part, and there are some witty and genuine moments, but because everything feels thrown together, there's little to take with you in the end.

It's the classic example of a movie trying too much. Had the filmmakers made things a little simpler, like sticking to a single story or character, rather than five or six or seven, then perhaps the cliches wouldn't have been as bothersome. As it is, the movie is so muddled that it doesn't even feel like it takes place in the seventies. Instead, it feels like it could have taken place at any time to the same results.

The film stars Natasha Lyonne (from Woody Allen's fantastic Everyone Says I Love You) as Vivian, the only daughter of a poor family living in the slums of Beverly Hills so that they can have the prestige of the address and be accepted into better colleges as a result. The father, Murray (Alan Arkin), is a car salesman who can't keep away from the track. Ely Marienthal and David Krumholtz play her two crass but lovable brothers, Ricky and Ben.

The plot, what there is of it, involves their time with their nutty cousin Rita (Marisa Tomeii, in perhaps in the blandest, most melodramatic role of her career), who moves in with them after escaping from a rehab clinic. Rita's father is rich, and when Murray takes her in, he strikes a deal with her father, played by Carl Reiner, to help support her. This extra money allows the family to move to a higher class apartment. From there, we watch all sorts of family joys and problems ensue: incest, drugs, lost love, maturity, growing up, etc.

There's a lot in here, but little gets capitalized upon. For example, there's a major sub-plot involving Vivian's sexual awakening with her neighbor, Eliot (Kevin Corrigan), a local pot dealer. Why is she so quick to attach herself to him? Why doesn't he do anything but hang around her? Doesn't he have friends? Does she like him or is she just using him? I don't know. Because the movie doesn't focus on any one part of the plot directly, these questions - and more - are left to hang, and instead of answering these questions, the film turns to another sub-plot. As a result, Slums and all of its issues and stories becomes a muddle of sit-com material. A disappointment, to say the least. The funny part, though, is that I still liked it more than Boogie Nights.

Eyal Goldshmid
I am a fiction writer supporting myself as a government clerk for the US army. Until I can fully live off writing, I plan to milk all the luxury I can from the American taxpayer.