Get Well Soon (2001)

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Blistering performances.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I liked it. It didn't strive to do too much and what it did it did well. Wacky comedy, gross at times, but justifiable in overall context. Not for the academy awards movie watchers, but if you like to run with its coyness, a good time will be had by all. You will forget this urban comedy after you view it, but while you are viewing it, a fun, manic, movie.

Love Gallo, that's gotta be stated up front, that's why I wanted to see this film in the first place. He's great in it, of course, as 'empty' talk show host Bobby Bishop, searching the streets of New York City for his lost true love, Lily (Courtney Cox). There's a lot of other stuff going on as well (a LOT of stuff) - crazy people trying to steal Matthew Broderick's dog (to get closer to Sarah Jessica Parker), Lily's mother (the great Anne Meara), who is - get this - practicing to be a homeless person (just in case), gay boyfriends, insane friends, lying hookers, Bobby's beyond-brown-nosing manager (the fabulous Jeffrey Tambor, who played basically the same role on Gary Shandling's show). I think this is the main reason the movie is just not very satisfying -- there's simply too #$@kin' much going on, for $@#(*&ts sake.If some of these characters had been left out (like most of them), and we had gotten to focus more on Bobby and his self-destructive-but-trying-oh-so-hard-to-make-it-work character, Get Well Soon would have been a far better movie. Gallo, with all his good/bad-and-everything-inbetween contradictions gloriously blazing in full form, could have easily carried the day.

Where a lot of romantic comedies fall down is that you can not for one believe for one moment that the couple won't actually end up together, no matter what obstacles are tossed in their path. The truimph of Get Well Soon is that it casts Vincent Gallo, best know for playing a variety of sociopaths and oddballs, as the lead male. Just like in Buffalo 66, the Gallo character is so fundamentally self-destructive that you can really believe he's going to mess this up and it's almost a relief when he doesn't. Likeable supporting characters and a good performance from Cox, it's a shame this movie didn't get more recognition. Or indeed, any at all.

Mr Vincent Gallo is an absorbing, eye-catching beast. Whilst immediately drawn to his fractured features, it is his concentrated screen presence that you hold in mind. Here he plays Kevin, in the guise of the Bobby Bishop, a late-night talk-show host. Becoming increasingly aware of his frustrating emptiness, he starts to twist free of the ever-pandering agents, artists and parasites that accompany his fame. His thoughts turn to an abandoned love (Courteney Cox), and returning home for a reconciliation, encounters involving and amusing obstacles such as thieves, hookers, imitators, mental patients and the police. This is clearly Vincent's film, from the music to the awakened speech to camera near the end, however Courteney Cox performs admirably and the scenes with her mother are played well. The rest of the cast fill their scenes with delirious energy, although the wonderful talents and Romanian beauty of Elina Lowensohn were not rewarded with enough screen time. Director Justin McCarthy's direction is crisp. He develops the story well, and has framed New York nicely. Keep an eye out for 'Jump', an earlier piece of work.