Ira & Abby: Grade A

A
Ira & Abby (2006)
Chris Messina, Jennifer Westfeldt (also wrote), with Robert Klein, Jason Alexander, Fred Willard. Director Robert Cary.

Fabulously wealthy but neurotic Manhattanites struggle to find and maintain romantic relationships, while making ironic, sarcastic, and sardonic quips about life, family and psychotherapy. Sound familiar? If Woody Allen appeared in this movie you wouldn’t be surprised. Ira (Messina) is an intelligent but socially inept Ph.D. student who is fired by his psychoanalyst. He meets Abby (Westfeldt) in a health club and they are enchanted with each other immediately. Abby’s character is reminiscent of the loopy, airhead role played by Mira Sorvino in Allen’s 1996 Mighty Aphrodite, which highlights a distinction: Allen’s New York comedies have layers of sophisticated literary and cinematic allusion that this competent but light comedy lacks.

Ira and Abby impulsively get married and the game is on. Jealousy, suspicion, infidelity, relationships with ex-partners, mistaken identities, the awkwardness of breaking up and reconciling, compatibility of different lifestyles; all the standard relationship foibles are explored. If there are any overarching themes, one is to question the nature of marriage itself. There are some very funny scenes in which the meaning and value of marriage is discussed. We see weddings, divorce, remarriage, annulment, and finally rejection of the very institution of marriage. A less heavy-handed theme is a hilarious ridicule of psychotherapy. A closing scene with all the story’s therapists, analysts, psychologists and psychiatrists in attendance with the principal players had me squawking with delight. What raises this lightweight comedy up to excellence is the outstanding acting by almost everyone. It is a joy to watch. If you like Woody Allen movies, you’ll love this knockoff.

When Nietzsche Wept: Grade F

F

When Nietzsche Wept (2007)
Armand Assante, Ben Cross. Co-writer and Director Pinchas Perry.

Nietzsche would have wept to see how his life and work were treated in this historical drama about the relationship between himself and Viennese physician (and Freud’s mentor) Joseph Breuer. At least the main points of the story were historically accurate, and the sets and costumes looked authentic 1880's. But the acting is abominable. When the normally monosyllabic, tough-guy action figure Armand Assante is the best actor in the cast, you know you are in trouble. A stilted script that had everybody barking declarative statements did not help, but some real acting might have saved it. Instead, actors announced their lines in stentorian tones as if they were robots. The exceptionally lame dream sequences were boring, graceless, and did not move the story, which was supposed to be about Breuer’s self-realization of his attachment to several women: his wife, Lou Salome, and his patient Anna O. A sub-theme, well-known to historians of psychoanalysis, is that Freud stole all his main ideas from Nietzsche, but Freud is only a peripheral character here. Assante’s performance is a revelation, but slogging through this dreadful movie to see it is too high a price to pay.