# Muse, The (1999)

### reviewed by
Stephen Graham Jones

Through Get Shorty we learned that to make it in Hollywood, you have to be not of Hollywood. That way all your 'foreign' methods of doing things will be just new enough to work. The west coast was a cakewalk for Chili Palmer and his in your face, loan-shark approach. It's similarly easy for Sarah Little (Sharon Stone), the muse of Albert Brooks' The Muse, not to be confused with Mighty Aphrodite, though the reflective brand of humor in both targets more or less the same audience and both are organized around the continual dilemmas of a neurotic/sardonic male lead and his associations with a mysterious women. Unlike Mighty Aphrodite, however, this is LA, meaning that Lorenzo Lamas is in the diner, Rob Reiner's at the aquarium, James Cameron is at the doorstep, Martin Scorcese's desperately seeking Starbuck's. As in The Player, too, this long string of cameos is just part of the behind-the-scenes- of-Hollywood Hollywood movie, pulling back the curtain on the machinery which makes the magic. What The Muse does to that machine, though, is make it magic as well. Sarah Little claims to be the daughter of Zeus, you see. Which makes her significantly more foreign than Chili Palmer (Olympia vs. Florida). And more than claims: she has all the big-name producers and directors at her beck and call, everyone dependent upon her for inspiration. Enter 'past-his-prime' screenwriter Steven Phillips, (Albert Brooks, same character as always, different name) just let go by a major studio because he's supposedly lost his edge. Edge or no, though, he has a family to support, meaning soon enough he's just desperate enough to believe in earthly deities, divine manifestations, whatever it takes to get his 'edge' back, make him a commodity again. The thing is, though--as he finds out--muses are high-maintenance, requiring ideal conditions to sleep, midnight salads, spontaneous daytrips, limousines etc, all of which harry Steven to the point of exhaustion, strain his marriage in the usual, comical ways, all that. Which is satisfying. To add to the mix he even has an advisor, Jack (Jeff Bridges, not playing Jeff Bridges, which, in a cameo-heavy show, is initially confusing), who's also dependent on Sarah for inspiration. In a movie founded in myth, though, of course the main character will have an advisor. And of course Jeff Bridges pulls it off with grace; his tennis-serving scene is one of the two high-points of it all. The second high point has to be at a cocktail party, when Brooks really lets go with his signature ability to spool dialogue line on top of line, and somehow keep it all at least peripherally pertinent. Every time you think the back and forth is over, it's not, which is definitely his strength. It's why everyone quotes Broadcast News. But The Muse isn't just about underbreath conversation (though it does start slow and hushed, until Sarah gets on-screen). As expected, it's a touch intellectual as well, even going so far as to toy with the foundational myth-structure, or, to foreground what's usually repressed in these divine-intervention mythic cycles: the host/parasite dynamic. The way Sarah is at least as dependent upon Steven as Steven is dependent upon her, which is something of a wry comment upon religion, perhaps, or at least upon a culture always looking over its shoulder to Greece. But quiet enough not to get in the way, too. This is, after all, a movie about the moviemakers, or, the realization of a screenplay about a screenwriter. It has to hold itself to a higher, more self-conscious standard. Is it Skin Deep or Barton Fink, though, right? Well, it has elements of both--even a surprise Coen-ish ending, minus the John Goodman serial killer--but the laugh-a-minute pacing pushes it perhaps a little more in John Ritter's direction, which isn't at all a bad thing. (c) 1999 Stephen Graham Jones

for more like this, check out http://www.cinemuck.com

The review above was posted to the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due to ASCII to HTML conversion.

Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews