Director: Michael Patrick Jann
Cast: Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards
Have I Seen It Before: Pretty sure I have, although memory has faded. There was definitely a time where I was taking in every mockumentary I could get my hands on, and the sight of a beer can welded to the remains of Ellen Barkin’s hand is not one would just forget.
Did I Like It: It is regularly very funny, and with a pitch-black quality to the proceedings that in my own head this film and Fargo (1996) take place in the same universe*.
But there’s got to be some kind of problem, right?
If one were to get within striking range of watching this now, especially with people who love the film—as I did during a late-night screening at the Circle—there are always whispers that the film couldn’t possibly be made today**, for fear of it being immediately cancelled. I tend to think that for every pitch-black joke on display, its horrifyingly funny not because we are laughing at someone’s plight, but more because we realize that the only reason these characters are as miserable as they are is because the myopic conservatism that passes for some sense of community in Mount Rose obliterates any degree of human kindness and will inevitably destroy everyone it touches. I’m laughing at Kirstie Alley and Denise Richards, not so much Will Sasso or Alexandra Holden.
Then again, maybe it’s the day before the election, and I’m reaching.
*Aside from a blink-and-you-miss-it (and I sincerely hope you don’t miss it) appearance by Kristin Rudrüd as “Pork Products Lady”, there’s no cast overlap. There’s almost as much connective tissue between these two movies as there is between Fargo on film and TV.
**When did 1999 become so long ago? Oh. Sometime between numbers starting with “2” and it being a quarter of century ago. Got it.