Beanbioca As Good As It Gets

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

bessiesmith-1 I have admired Dorothy Parker's work for many years and always found her persona to be fascinating. If someone had told me that it was possible to make a boring film about this lady, I would have disagreed. Sad to say, I would have been wrong. Last night I sat through the entire film, waiting—i vain—for are deeming moment. The script was a hopeless muddle, the acting was strenuous, the music went from bland to annoying, and the direction perfectly complemented these flaws. The only thing this wreck of a film has going for it is the costume design.Dorothy Parker's life deserves a film treatment, but this failed attempt will probably prevent that from happening any time soon, if ever. What a shame!Chris Albertson

dantown This is a fine movie about a sad writer. It is filmatically fine and above average. Jennifer Jason Leigh is a fine fricken actress.Jennifer's dad, Vic Morrow, of course was killed by a helicopter.Not a helicopter accident. A helicopter killed Vic Morrow by impacting his head with a helicopter blade. This may have cast a sad shadow on her life and intellect. Just my opinion. This is more a movie about Jennifer Jason Leigh's acting than Dorothy Parker.You should watch it as a tutorial on fine acting by a female. You should just breathe in the lovely technique of JJLeigh.She just manifests ordinary sadness amidst Parker's brightness. This movie inserts sepia-like poems *by Dorothy* into this biography and does so, well. The movie tracks the life and times of a certain Dorothy, who doesn't find the rainbow, or Oz.This Dorothy,Parker, ain't quite a poet but her movie is a thrilling and saddening biography. Dorothy Parker wasn't quite a poet I feel because she didn't 'make/write the grand sweep of poetry'. Who am I too judge you ask? Well, Parker writes clever doggerel not poetry. I suspect she may have had the anti-poetry affliction. Kinda like ripping off the derailleurs on your ten-speed bike old girl.Just my opinion. If Dorothy wanted to be a poet, p'raps she coulda opened up the full throttle engine of language of pentameter and hexameter and tetrameter--of glorious Shakespearian good stuff-which English provides. I suspect Dorothy thought she had to be cute or post-modern or whatever in order to be considered a 'real poet'. Just a guess on my part. A poet writes the f**k out of the language in order to discover the true truth of a language. Language, at least in Western culture, has all kinds of meter in it-naturally occurring. Parker was a reductionist- or what I call 'cheap with words'. When can a writer be cheap with words? Answer: Never. Jack Kerouac rolled a giant roll of paper into his remington-rand to complete his major work of writing. Moving along. Campbell Scott is pretty fine here as Robert Benchley. Jennifer Beals is wasted as the Forlorn Wife. This is a fine movie about empty people of great promise. Did I really just write that?

LCShackley I am a fan of many of the writers who flit in and out of this movie, but I confess I don't know much about their personal lives and habits (except perhaps for Benchley, and Thurber who is only barely mentioned in this film). This film gives the viewer a good sense of what it must have been like to be part of the wildly creative crew that surrounded the legendary Algonquin Round Table, but a very confused picture of Dorothy Parker's life. Only someone who already knows her story, and can keep her various husbands and lovers in order, can piece this mish-mash together. And none of the performers are strong enough to seem like anything more than walk-ons dressed as famous people. (The "gang" scenes work because of the fast pacing; the movie drags when we spend time with the individuals.) According to comments recorded here, Miss Leigh is doing a good vocal impression of Dorothy Parker. Maybe so (I've never heard Parker), but Leigh's delivery is so totally annoying that it's enough to drive the AUDIENCE to suicide. Is she trying to do Hepburn on downers? Sometimes her mannered accent veers toward Transylvanian.Throughout the movie, Parker herself denigrates her little "doodad" poems, but that's all the film offers us of her creative output. We never really find out about the contents of her books and plays, and how she ended up in Hollywood (and what she wrote there). After a few of her doggerel verses, they become trite. I began to wonder if people think these poems are funny because they know they're SUPPOSED to be funny.I'm sure there's probably a good movie in Mrs. Parker's life, but I don't think this is it.

caspian1978 Jennifer Jason Leigh does an amazing job as she shows her true acting ability in Mrs. Parker. However, the movie in which she had an amazing performance was far from an amazing movie. While the cast of actors in the movie are terrific and the production value with the costumes are great, where was the story? Call mew crazy, but I am one of 99% of the world who does not know who Mrs. Parker was. Therefore, I was left in the dark with everyone else who still did not know who they heck she was by the end of the movie. OK, she was a great writer and poet, but why couldn't the story better portray that and tells the audience more about her accomplishments. Watching a table full of fast talking "know it alls" was far from enjoyable. Jennifer Jason Leigh built and built on her character but eventually tipped over when the audience stopped caring what the movie was about. If this is about her and her failed attempt at love, this was a slow melodrama that left the audience wanting more of a plot. If this was the true story of a woman that was before her time, the move was far from completion as the movie only scratched the surface at what her life was about. The ending credits did nothing for Mrs. Parker's legacy. It's nice that the movie didn't show one African American, but Mrs. Parker leaves her estate to Martin Luther King Jr.. Was that just thrown in there to give Mrs. Parker some credit for spending most of her life depressed and writing about it? Don't get me wrong, Jennifer Jason Leigh did a great job, but she received little credit for her role because the movie itself sunk with or without her performance.