# Too Much Sleep (1997)

### reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten

    TOO MUCH SLEEP

     Reviewed by Harvey Karten
     Shooting Gallery
     Director: David Maquiling
     Writer:  David Maquiling
     Cast: Marc Palmieri, Pasquale Gaeta, Nicol Zanzarella, Phil
    Galinsky, Judy Sabo Podinker

Some 30 years ago a couple of colleagues of mine, high school teachers like me, bought homes in Matawan, New Jersey where writer-director David Maquiling last year filmed "Too Much Sleep." They encouraged me to do likewise since, after all, for $19,000 they were getting spanking new digs built by Levitt complete with refrigerators and washing machines. I was young and naive and spouted the usual urban nonsense about the suburbs as homogenized, uninteresting, sterile places where all your associates are just like you, but one of my pals took issue with me with the argument, "My next-door neighbor is Japanese!" So much for my theories about homogeneity. What Mr. Maquiling is trying to bring out in "Too Much Sleep" is, well, it could be just about anything. He might want to tell us that within those prettily manicured, conventional, uniform blades of grass lie some of the most biazarre people, folks you might even find in the heart of Manhattan. He could be putting his original touch on the folk tales of his native Philippine Islands, as he tells us in the press notes. But mostly I'd guess that he's displaying a young man's fast odyssey from naivete and sloth to activity and concern just like the David Hemmings character in Antonioni's "Blowup."

He doesn't really succeed, though, in part because there's no way that his key figure could possibly grow up in such a short time. His experiences are shallow. What's more the gun is falsely utilized to symbolize manhood--a maturity that its 24-year-old owner does not really have but has to earn. If that's what Mr. Maquiling is attempting here, he's pushing the envelope quite a bit past its comfortable margins.

Let's take the weight from Mr. Maquiling's shoulders and presume that he's simply writing a shaggy-dog story about his own youth in a bland American suburban neighborhood. He tells of Jack Crawford (Marc Palmieri), a night security guard who carries an unlicensed gun which he inherited from his father. Riding a bus one day, he is scammed into losing the piece and suspects two women riding next to him; the older Judy (Judo Sabo Podinker) and the youthful Kate (Nicol Zanzarella). Rather than go to the police, he consults with the town know-it-all, Eddie (Pasquale Gaeta), a motormouth who brags endlessly about his affairs, his political standing (he was deputy county clerk for 19 years), and his contacts with both the police and the local criminal faction. Eddie, who prefaces a good many of his statements with "Let me tell you something, Jack," advises him where to go and what to do in his search for the revolver, an exploration which supposedly leads Jack from a detached dude who lives with his mother and sleeps in a childhood bed too small for his over 6' body, to a committed, more manly character: a mensch.

Critics have compared the movie thematically to the far better David O. Russell "Spanking the Monkey," Stacey Cochran's "My New Gun," also "Coldblooded" and "In the Soup" and even David Lynch's "Blue Velvet," but the director seems influenced most by Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" which features an ordinary guy who goes through a series of bizarre experiences during one night in New York City. Like the Griffin Dunne character in the film, Jack is the about the only normal person in "Too Much Sleep." The others are like those we try to avoid like the plague. Who wants to spend 15 minutes with a blabber like Eddie or listen to the jabbering of a woman who runs into Jack at the bus terminal and lectures him about how much he looks like his father--while not recognizing that Jack's looking all around the room signifies his lack of interest? What kind of woman would ask the bouncer in a gay bar featuring untalented dancers to beat the crap out of Jack just because he's asking her some questions in her back-room office?

Marc Palmieri's Jack, though, can gain audience involvement if only because he's normal--which is a switch from the usual concept that outlandish people are the most absorbing. At least Nicol Zanzarella is cute but she too is without a personality and has not a thing of interest to say. Robert Mowen's camera has little to work with in a film that could easily fit on your 13-inch TV screen.

Not Rated. Running time: 88 minutes. (C) 2001 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com

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