# Hurlyburly (1998)

### reviewed by
Bill Chambers

HURLYBURLY *** (out of four) -a review by Bill Chambers ( fonzie@filmfreakcentral.net )

(Film Freak Central - the next best thing to watching movies. http://filmfreakcentral.net )

starring Sean Penn, Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright Penn, Chazz Palminteri screenplay by David Rabe, based on his play directed by Anthony Drazan

The word "hurlyburly" describes the thought patterns of Eddie the Cokehead to a tee. As played by Sean Penn, hypersensitive Eddie is like the wind-up toy that always threatens to stroll right off the tabletop. Eddie just doesn't let things go-at first his behaviour smacks of self-absorption. As the movie progresses, we come to understand Eddie as a kind of existential Sherlock Holmes, desperate to get to the bottom of, quite literally, everything. Hurlyburly is about how a place like Hollywood can eat a person like Eddie alive.

Eddie, with his pencil-thin mustache and lazily gelled hair, is a player high enough on the food chain to afford a big, sterile Beverly Hills pad and enough cocaine to keep him buzzed all day. (He snorts in place of morning coffee.) He shares his home with Mickey (Spacey), a slick, bleach-blonde smoothie who is dating the woman (Wright Penn) Eddie had his sights set on. (Eventually Mickey, feeling not so much shame or guilt as defeat and frustration, breaks up with the woman, Darlene, and encourages her to hook up with Eddie.) Further stressing Eddie out is Phil (Palminteri), a hulky, ticking time bomb who grows more violent and more needy as his marriage corrodes. Phil is a stray pitbull our hero can't shake...and deep down, Eddie doesn't want to lose him, because Phil's hostility makes Eddie look rational by comparison. Meanwhile, a teenage runaway (The Piano's Anna Paquin, unfortunately the film's weakest link) is staying at their house, a "gift" from friend Artie (Garry Shandling), who spotted her on an elevator.

Hurlyburly does not shed its stagebound roots-no more than a handful of scenes unfold outside of Eddie and Mickey's place, and towards the end of the film one senses that Drazan is struggling to maintain some visual interest in the central location. But the cast is mesmerizing enough to compensate; these performances are grand and theatrical and, thanks to the advantages of the close up, paradoxically intimate-our eyes and ears are peeled throughout. Spacey, effectively typecast, plays apathetic Mickey with confidence. (The quintessential Spacey moment comes during an exchange towards the end of the picture: Eddie: "You have no feelings!" Mickey: "No, I have my own feelings, not yours.") Palminteri as Phil annoys and frightens in balanced doses, just as he should. However, the picture belongs to Penn, as the addict whose brain is too big for his heart. Five and ten minute chunks of Hurlyburly pass with no one speaking but Eddie, who delivers stupefacient monologues that invariably end in tears. Penn doesn't earn our sympathies-instead, he wins something closer to pity. Your enjoyment of the film will hinge on whether or not you can stomach two solid hours of Sean Penn.

Which leads me to my next point: as enthralling as all this human drama frequently is, Hurlyburly overstays its welcome. Perhaps that's because there's very little order to the story's structure; when Bonnie, a stripper (Meg Ryan, flexing atrophied acting muscles), shows up in what I'll call act two, it seems for no other reason than boredom on the part of Rabe. Such is the nature of the filmed play, I suppose, but Drazan could have edited a tighter film. Without the benefit of the play's intermission, the travails of Eddie and his cruisers are thoroughly exhausting.

                                        -January, 1999

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