Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
by Alan Rudolph
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Campbell Scott, Jennifer Beals, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Matthew Broderick, Peter GallagherDirector: Alan Rudolph
Brand: Image Entertainment
Producer: Robert Altman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 126 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-09-05
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Image Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Movie Review: You won't be disappointed
Summary: 5 Stars
Critics moaned when Jennifer Jason Leigh was tapped to portray Dorothy Parker, the Grand Lady of Barbed Words whose light shone brightest in the colorful 1920s. And, predictably, many critics trashed Leigh's performance. But, while Leigh made her name making sexy comedies and sexy thrillers, she actually does an excellent job here as the witty wordsmith in "Mrs. Parker & the Vicious Circle." OK, so she played a sexy wordsmith, getting naked with fellow writer Charles MacArthur (Matthew Broderick) for an eye-candy romp. But the sex and nudity, for all its visual appeal, could have hit the cutting-room floor without much being lost from the film. The romance that makes this film worth watching is the romance that never happens: Parker's non-romance with humorist Robert Benchley (Campbell Scott).
Let's face it, Broderick shared top billing with Leigh because he's a name. But it's Scott who deserved it; it's Scott's Benchley who provided an excellent foil for matching wits and barbs with Parker. They were, it seems, the perfect match -- but the film tells us they never consummated for fear of losing what closeness they already had.
Parker, Benchley and, to some extent, MacArthur were part of the Algonquin Round Table, the so-called "vicious circle" of the title, a regular gathering of the luminaries of the writing field back in the good ol' days of Prohibition. And director Alan Rudolph assembled a fine cast to round out the circle: Robert Sherwood (Nick Cassavetes), Edna Ferber (Lili Taylor), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Malcolm Gets), Harold Ross (Sam Robards) and Alexander Woollcott (Tom McGowan), among others, plus occasional cameos by the likes of Will Rogers (Keith Carradine) and a lively Harpo Marx (J.M. Henry).
We get to see them talk and drink at New York's Algonquin Hotel, we get to see them drink and talk at private parties. We also get to see them put on a variety show, the highlight of which is Benchley's fumbling financial report. Occasionally, we see a few of them working, as writers and editors of Vanity Fair and the fledgling New Yorker.
The film plays havoc with chronology, jumping around in the '20s, '30s, '40s and '50s, interspersed with brief scenes of Leigh reciting a few lines of Parker's immortal poetry. But most of the film is set in the '20s, and that's where the real color lies. (To drive that point home, Rudolph had later scenes filmed in black and white, while the early stuff in the '20s is in vivid color.) The Round Table comprised some of the finest literary minds of the age, and the lines popping out of their mouths throughout the film are classic literary gems. The best are traded between Parker and Benchley, who flirt outrageously across the years but never "misbehave" -- with each other, anyway -- like so many of their peers were doing.
Some of the best scenes are shot at the Table, with the camera panning from face to face as they drop lines -- many of which today crowd the pages of any good book of quotations -- with machine-gun rapidity and a surgeon's precision.
Of course, Parker's life wasn't all grins and giggles, and Leigh manages to show us the pain beneath the giddy facade. Parker, like many of her friends, was an alcoholic. She was unlucky in love and kept outliving her beloved dogs. She attempted suicide a few times; the movie shows only once. She was proud, but often too poor to sustain her lifestyle. She survived most of her friends, sank into senility and, despite her wishes, died on a sunny day. She also excelled in a field and an era dominated by men, and her name and writings outlasted the work of many of her male contemporaries.
This isn't a feel-good film by any stretch, but it's not dark and depressing, either. It's a slice of life -- in this case, a slice of several extraordinary lives from a very different time. The dialogue borrows heavily from the characters' actual words, and it's some of the most sparkling dialogue to show up on the big screen in a very long time.
by Tom Knapp, Rambles.(n e t) editor
Summary of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Cigarette smoke and laughter... The hollow clink of martini glasses and biting one-liners... This was the famed lunch scene at the Algonquin Hotel's Round Table of the 1920's, home to a circle of mutually supportive young artists that defined the heyday of New York sophistication and a literate era of wit and intellect. At the heart of the round table sat Mrs. Dorothy Parker (Jennifer Jason Leigh), one of the sharpest, most biting wits of the past century. But beneath the raucous laughter is a darker and richer tale filled with passionate affairs, friendship and tragedy, all captured in this striking masterpiece of unrequited love and self-destructive impulses from acclaimed director Alan Rudolph (The Secret Life of Dentists, Choose Me).All-Star Cast! Featuring Jennifer Jason Leigh (Single White Female, Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Campbell Scott (The Exorcism of Emily Rose), Matthew Broderick (The Producers, Ferris Bueller's Day Off), Peter Gallagher (TV's The O.C., American Beauty), Academy Award winner Gwyneth Paltrow (The Royal Tenenbaums, Shakespeare in Love), Heather Graham (Boogie Nights, Lost in Space), Jennifer Beals (TV's The L Word, Devil in a Blue Dress), Andrew McCarthy (Weekend at Bernie's, TV's Kingdom Hospital), Wallace Shawn (Clueless, The Princess Bride), Martha Plimpton (Parenthood, 200 Cigarettes), Lili Taylor (High Fidelity, Short Cuts), James LeGros (Living in Oblivion, The Rapture), Nick Cassavetes (Face/Off, director of The Notebook), Stephen Baldwin (Posse, Threesome), Stanley Tucci (Big Night, The Devil Wears Prada), Keith Carradine (Nashville, The Long Riders) and Jon Favreau (Elf, Swingers).
The press kit's historical notes should be standard issue for anyone who sees Alan Rudolph's (The Moderns, Choose Me) look at the famous intellectuals who dotted New York's finest hour in the 1920s. If you only know the names of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, et al. in passing, this movie will hardly generate more study. These writers and thinkers, most famous for having lunch daily at the Algonquin Hotel, seem as weightless and thin as the fictional ones in The Moderns. Most luminous is Mrs. Parker (Jennifer Jason Leigh), whose passion for unhappiness is rarely interrupted. Leigh, in a performance that viewers seem to love or loathe, swirls "witty" dialogue with pure force and must be praised for keeping your interest in a life that was so dreary. The chief problem is not the performances (Campbell Scott is quite fun in a change-of-pace role); it's that the movie comes off as a taped show on stage: the characters are not real and it's all dress-up. Rudolph illustrates his main character's writing (done far too seldom in writers' bios) by having Leigh speak Parker's poetry directly into the camera. --Doug Thomas
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