1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 31: The truth about cats & dogs

From IMDb:

Janeane Garofalo has been quite vocal about how unhappy she was with the film. Initially it was an independent film, but it was turned into a big-studio project when Uma Thurman signed on. Garofalo remarked, “I think it’s soft and corny. The soundtrack makes you want to puke. And everybody’s dressed in Banana Republic clothing. The original script and intent was very different. It was supposed to be a small-budget independent film, with a lot more complexity to the characters. …” Garofalo has since disowned the film, calling it anti-feminist.

Ah, well, too bad. This is the movie she’ll be remembered for.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Well, maybe not. IMDb lists the top four movies she’s known for:

• Ratatouille
• Mystery Men
• Wet Hot American Summer
• Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion

Not, alas, The Truth about Cats & Dogs.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I was just out of college when I saw this movie on TV. Since then, I’ve fondly remembered Garofalo’s performance. I didn’t remember that Uma Thurman was in the movie. Not that Thurman is bad; hers is a tricky role, and she acquits herself with aplomb. It’s just that Garofalo is superb.

Garofalo plays a type who appears now and then in romanctic comedies set in and around Los Angeles:

A variant of the “lonely hearts” columnist, this stock character dispenses advice, over the radio, about matters of the heart. Off the air, however, she is lonely. Against her better judgment, she permits one of her callers to get a little too close for comfort.

The splendidly earnest Geneviève Bujold, in Choose Me (1984), occupies this role. A more recent example – who is much more crass – is a young woman who hosts a satellite radio show in the third season of Netflix’s Love.

Garofalo’s character, Abby Barnes, is situated halfway between these two radio personalities. A veterinarian, she gives medical and relational advice to pet owners. She has a distinctive style: her wordplay is quick and slightly off-color; her advice is blunt but kind. One can believe that a casual listener would stop turning the dial and settle down to hear Doctor Abby Barnes talk to strangers about their pets.

One caller is Brian (Ben Chaplin), a young Britisher whose dog is having a crisis. Abby gives helpful advice. Brian calls again (not on the air) to ask Abby out on a date. Abby reluctantly agrees.

“What do you look like?” Brian asks.

This touches a nerve. Abby tells him that she is tall and blond (she is short and dark). She stands him up.

And then the movie puts its stock protagonist into a rather different stock scenario:

The protagonist’s love object becomes attracted to one of the protagonist’s friends. To disavow any claim on the love object – and, perhaps, to remain in the love object’s orbit – the protagonist encourages the relationship by advising and lending considerable wit to the friend.

This, of course, is the plot of Cyrano de Bergerac and its progeny (e.g., Roxanne). Usually, the witty, pining protagonist is a man, and the love object is a woman. This is inverted in The Truth about Cats & Dogs.

Abby’s friend is Noelle, a relatively new acquaintance who is getting out of a bad relationship. Noelle is played by Uma Thurman, who is blond and very tall. When Brian comes to the radio station to plead his case to Abby, he sees Noelle and infers that she must be Doctor Barnes.

Abby tells Noelle not to correct the misunderstanding. In the rest of the movie, Brian woos the awkward Noelle, whom he believes to be Abby, while Abby tags along as a “third wheel.” Of course, there are sparks between Abby and Brian.

And there you have it: the story plays out as you might expect it to do.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The movie’s strength lies in its characterizations. Chaplin makes Brian into a very nice bloke. He is as kind to Abby as to Noelle when the three of them are together – and, indeed, when he and Abby happen to be together without Noelle. He also must convey both singlemindedness and vacillation: he is resolved to persist in wooing the person with whom he has spoken on the radio, but when he’s with “Abby,” she isn’t at all the sort of person he knows Abby to be.

The real Abby, loving him from afar, is the character who makes the movie fun to watch. It’s poignant to observe a cynical person gradually realize that she is desired for herself. In one long sequence, Brian calls Abby at her apartment. Since they’re physically apart, Brian believes he is talking to Uma Thurman’s “Abby.” Even so, the real Abby is drawn to him. She and Brian talk until early morning. One blush follows another as Abby hears Brian compliment her, tease her, and declare his love – love for her mind, her character, rather than for Uma Thurman’s looks.

Thurman’s is perhaps the most difficult role to pull off. Noelle, who is superficially dim, has reserves of insight and fellow-feeling. She receives lots of ill-intended focus from men. It’s as surpising to her as it is to Abby when someone as kind and attentive as Brian comes wooing.

The movie is predictable, but there is a tiny amount of suspense. How will the disclosure of “Abby’s” real identity affect Noelle’s and Abby’s friendship?

There are signs that Noelle wants Brian for herself, despite his connection with Abby. But is Noelle really the kind of person who’d betray her friend?

Abby believes she might be. Partly, this is her knee-jerk assessment of women who are desired by lots and lots of men. But Abby also believes it because, in this case, it’s not altogether off the mark.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ll give away the ending:

Noelle stands with her friend.

The movie has lots of animals in it. They’re included for comic effect. But the movie is about people, not animals. Why, then, is it called The Truth about Cats & Dogs? What truth does the movie reveal about cats and dogs?

Well, let’s allow ourselves to be a little crude and to put scare quotes around some of the words: THE TRUTH ABOUT “CATS” & “DOGS.” Some beautiful women are thought of as “cats” who undermine other women. And some women are thought of, or think of themselves, as ugly “dogs.” The title suggests that these hateful appraisals need not be true.

Also: “CATS” & “DOGS.” Ampersand. “Cats” and “dogs” in partnership – as friends.

The movie may be “soft and corny,” as Garofalo says, but that doesn’t make it anti-feminist. It’s anti-anti-feminist. It’s about how a smart woman who has trouble getting along with certain other women learns to see the truth about her friend and herself. Perhaps I’m “mansplaining,” but I wish Garofalo would look beyond the glamorous casting and the Banana Republic clothes and see the truth about what a lovely movie she’s helped to make.

read more »

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 10: Beautiful girls

This movie takes place in the coldest, snowiest time of the year, in a town in the northeastern United States. The setting is not unlike those of It’s a Wonderful Life and the bleak novel Appointment in Samarra. Everyone knows everybody else; the hierarchies have long been established; very little goes on, and so the inhabitants drink a lot of alcohol and dabble in sexual and romantic intrigue.

The most troubling flirtation is the one between Marty (Natalie Portman), a precocious thirteen-year-old, and Willie (Timothy Hutton), who’s twenty-nine and has returned to the town after many years in the big city. Marty’s and Willie’s scenes are meant to be charming, but some viewers may well be disgusted by them. The obvious contrast is with the novel Lolita, in which it’s clear that the teenaged character’s flirtatiousness is a projection of the adult narrator’s warped point of view. Is anything like this true of Marty’s and Willie’s scenes in Beautiful Girls? It would seem not.

Whether or not the movie errs in failing to condemn a grown man’s attraction to a thirteen-year-old, its focus is upon a different problem, which is that Willie is insufficiently committed to the grown woman with whom he’s in a long-term relationship. This is a problem that he shares with several other male characters.

They include Tommy (Matt Dillon) and Paul (Michael Rapaport), who are involved with Sharon (Mira Sorvino) and Jan (Martha Plimpton), respectively. Tommy distracts himself from Sharon by continuing a long, stale affair with rich housewife Darian (Lauren Holly). Paul has fallen out with Jan because he idealizes women in a way encouraged by certain magazines. The movie could have been called “Distracted Men,” though that title wouldn’t have sold as many tickets as “Beautiful Girls.”

I list all these actors because their casting is crucial. No one plays against type. Hutton (Ordinary People) plays a starry-eyed idealist on the verge of self-destruction. Portman, previously of Léon: The Professional, seems sophisticated beyond her years. (Now that the years have caught up with her, is she as effective an actress?) Dillon, as in Drugstore Cowboy, A Kiss Before Dying, and Wild Things, plays an intelligent hunk trapped in a soul-crushing rut; Holly (Dumb and Dumber) plays a character who’s rich, glamorous, and accustomed to enjoying men’s attention. Rapaport and Plimpton look less gorgeous than the other actors but display incisive charisma. This is even truer of Rosie O’Donnell, whose task is to recite basic feminist wisdom.

Earlier I mentioned It’s a Wonderful Life and Appointment in Samarra – one story that ends well and another that ends badly. So, then: which way does this movie go? Do these people get better or worse? Is this movie nasty or nice?

From the beginning, there’s no question that it’s a very nice, very jolly movie. For all their misdeeds, the characters exhibit warmth and camaraderie, as in this poster – which arranges the cast around Andera (Uma Thurman), the movie’s most desirable “girl”:

Other characters, hitherto unmentioned, add to this camaraderie. They’ve more or less figured out life; they serve as beacons to those who are still wandering. A lot of caring goes on in this movie.

As Roger Ebert puts it:

What’s nicest about the film is the way it treasures the good feelings people can have for one another. They emerge most tenderly in the friendship between Willie and the 13-year-old girl.

They have crushes on each other for essentially idealistic reasons (each projects a simplicity and perfection that may not be there), and yet they draw apart, ever so tactfully, because they are sensible enough to know that it’s the right thing to do.

Their relationship is mirrored in all of the others, which are all about idealism and its disappointments. The men insist that women correspond to some sort of universal ideal, and the women sometimes blame themselves when they cannot. But somehow, doggedly, true love teaches its lesson, which is that you can fall in love with an ideal, but you can only be in love with a human being.

The townspeople are rough around the edges, as illustrated in scenes of misbehavior involving snowplows. Piling up snow in front of a former girlfriend’s garage is not a gentlemanly thing to do. But snow is, at least, clean; it can be cleared away; and, eventually, it will melt. This movie exhibits the comedic faith that wrongs are impermanent, that they can be undone.