Broken Flowers

Scribe's Review:

This movie is like having sex with a virgin: It starts off slowly and painful, there's lots of grumbling and pain, then suddenly you got full frontal nudity and things don't seem too bad!

Then she calls you the next day and you realize it isn't over.

In yet another moody, introspective Jim Jarmusch treatise on man's inner suffering, Bill Murray stars as an aging ladies man who suddenly receives a letter from an anonymous former conquest warning him of the possible arrival of an illegitimate son. With nothing to go on except a letter written with an old typewriter and a pink ribbon, he is coaxed into going on a ridiculous quest to locate the mother in question.

A thin plot, to be sure, and the first twenty minutes are filled with such dull, agonizing slowness that one almost feels that the movie has been placed on auto-pilot. Bill Murray is swiftly becoming the beleaguered, pathetic everyman in his new films and it is beyond annoying. How many times can this once active comic genius sit on his ass and stare at the camera in the name of "subtlety?" Apparently, at least one more since that's all he does until the middle portion of the film.

Jeffrey Wright is Murray's only friend in an atypically uninspired performance as a wanna-be detective. It is their unlikely bond that causes him to travel from chick to chick, searching for clues in the lamest and dullest way possible.

The films' conceit is its smug self-assured belief that it is presenting a minimalist, deeply philosophical commentary on regret and unhappiness. Films like this always wind up being more of a loosely bound collection of scenes than an actual narrative and this one is no exception.

Sadly, "Broken Flowers" only starts to become even remotely interesting at the very end of the film. But the left field ambiguousness of the so-called resolution just serves to remind the viewer of the overall pretentiousness of this poorly wrought effort by a hit and miss filmmaker.

Well, there is one other thing it serves to remind us of: Bill Murray is not only no longer cool, he is also little more than a pitiful shell of what he once was~

** out of ******

Green's Review:

Bill Murray stars as Don Johnston, an aging bachelor who was once the ladies man. Just as he's being dumped by his current fling, he receives this mysterious letter from a former girlfriend, hand addressed, typewritten on pink paper and mailed in a pink envelope. With no signature and a faded, unreadable postmark, the letter advises him that he has a 19 year old son, whom he didn't know about and has obviously never met. Due to the incessant badgering of his neighbor Winston, Don goes on a cross country quest to visit each of the four former girlfriends to see if they have any sons and to see if any of them will fess up. There are clues that each may be the one as there are subtle hints of pink at each woman's place. Not surprisingly, none of the four admit to writing the letter or having a son. Don never finds out who his son is or who the mother could be. When he gets back home, he sees a young boy on a "quest" and buys him a sandwich. They talk and Don, beginning to look hopeful, assumes this kid is his son. When confronted, the boy runs away. The movie ends with Don staring off in the street, dazed and confused as a car drives by with a boy in it who sort of resembles Don...

The DVD cover proclaims this to be a very funny film and one of Murray's best performances. I found it to be neither. The film is basically an exercise in uselessness and serves no purpose whatsoever. I like some sort of resolution to the films I watch and this movie provides none of that. The only conflict is his reluctance to go on the quest in mthe first place and his confrontations with each woman, none of which are overly compelling. The extremely talented Murray is horribly miscast in this role. The set of four widely different and extremely flaky women whom Murray's character seeks answers from provide the only semi-interesting point in the whole movie. Of the four, Sharon Stone's character was the one I liked best, primarily because she slept with him like no time had passed.

I had never heard of this film before we were prompted to review it and I can now see why. Do yourself a favor and avoid this film, unless you like to waste 106 minutes of time better spent watching a better movie.

*1/2 out of *****