Sun 8 Feb 2015
TANGLED. Ben’s Sister Productions, 2001. Rachael Leigh Cook, Shawn Hatosy, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Estella Warren, Lorraine Bracco. Director: Jay Lowi.
There are a lot of gaps in my movie-watching career, and the period from the mid 1980s on to, well, practically now, is the largest one. I’m trying to fill in the gaps in that period, but the doing is going a lot slower than I’d like. There are just too movies from the 30s and 40s that are on my Want to See Next list, that films like this one just have to work their way in somehow.
Which is a roundabout way of saying I picked this one at random out a box in the basement that’s been there for at least four or five years, maybe even longer. I’m not sure why I bought it in the first place, but after watching it last night, I’m glad I did.
It wasn’t because of the actors in it, as I couldn’t have placed names with faces with any of them, except one, that one being Lorraine Bracco (of The Sopranos fame, but I saw her first in Medicine Man with Sean Connery). In any case, of the players in the three leading roles, I can tell you now that I was impressed.
Taking Rachael Leigh Cook first, she plays Jenny, the center of this romantic drama, a diminutive young girl with plenty of spirit and two suitors, sort of, but that’s the story. One of them is David (Shawn Hatosy), an almost baby-faced lad who’s known Cook longer, but theirs is a friendship only, platonic you might say, although you know from watching him that he’d like it to be more. The other is David’s former roommate, Alan (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), who’s another free spirit, dashing, adventuresome, with dangerous-looking eyes, and everything David is not.
But even though sparks between Jenny and Alan are obviously immediately, the latter takes the time to ask the David if the way is clear, and David reluctantly says yes, although you know he’d like to say no. He even warns Jenny about Alan, telling her that falling for him would be a bad idea.
The story of this doomed three-way relationship is told in flashback by David to female detective Andersle (Lorraine Bracco), having been picked up by the police who have found the bodies of the other two in a secluded wooded area.
It’s been a while since my college days, both undergraduate and graduate, but I recognize pieces of each of the three major players in the students I knew back then, and the love affairs they had, the rivalries, the break-ups, and the getting back together again. Not a whole lot has changed, except nobody I knew back then ended up in a situation anything like this one. Not that I knew about, anyway.
In any case, it’s the skill of the actors that reminded me of my younger academic days more than any movie or book I’ve seen or read in quite a while. All three leads were convincing, and the next time I see a film that they’re in, I’ll be sure to take more than a quick glance at it.
One other thing. I’m sometimes annoyed when a film exists in the form of extended and sometimes overlapping flashbacks, but in this case, it was the only way it could have been done. I enjoyed this one.
February 8th, 2015 at 9:52 pm
My body was in the bushes a few times in college with another, but we both were alive.
I’ll look this one up when I finish with the other 10,000 ahead of it. I think I’m up to 1934, so things are going at a clip. I’m about up to that ingénue Bette Davis and some guy named Bogart…
Serious, I have a backlog downloaded from UTube that would choke a horse — many of them not even in English. I’m just now tackling PETER VOSS THIEF OF MILLIONS in German, and there are at least four versions of that one.
February 9th, 2015 at 6:50 am
Never heard of it but you make it sound fascinating!
My own college love-life a never that complicated: I’d ask a girl out, she’d say, “What’s that behind you?” and when I turned to look she’d run away.
David– As for the movie backlog, I recently looked over my shelves of to-be-watched DVDs and VHS tapes, calculated the number of hours of material there, divided by my daily watching time, and concluded that it will take me seven generations to get through them.
February 9th, 2015 at 7:23 am
For better or worse, my impression is that TANGLED is virtually unknown to film historians. It is not on the recommended film lists of experts like Jonathan Rosenbaum, Dan Sallitt or Jaime Christley. It has only seven reviews on IMDB.
I had never heard of it either. My own favorites for 2001 lean heavily on foreign films:
http://mikegrost.com/zten.htm#A2001
February 9th, 2015 at 10:32 am
I have a feeling that the reason there are so few external reviews on IMDb is that the film had a very limited theatrical run. There are 33 people who left comments — also relatively few for a recent motion picture — and I suspect they watched it on DVD.
It is amusing to see how mixed the reactions are to this movie. Everything I thought was well done, including the acting, the story, the flashbacks, others found moronic, unimaginative, predictable and confusing. I didn’t mention in my review that I felt that Lorraine Bracco’s acting was surprisingly lackluster, but someone else thought she was the best part of the picture.
As for me, there is no higher compliment than to say that this is one movie I will watch again some day. I don’t say that often.
February 9th, 2015 at 3:37 pm
Steve,
If a movie works for you it works and that is all that matters. I didn’t start writing reviews and criticism because I agreed with everyone, but to argue my case for or against something.
You gave us a chance to decide for ourselves which is all any of us can do. I suspect this went direct to DVD and was rented more than bought. That poster leads me to think it may even have been made for that market.
Dan,
Peter Voss, based on a popular German novel, is bank manager engaged to the daughter of the head of the bank who precedes to globe trot holding up banks as he goes trying to cover a ruinous shortage by his future father in law. It’s usually done with quite a bit of charm dating back to the first silent version.
I have the 1946 and 1958 versions. It was also a series with the actor from the 1958 film.
He seems to be a sort of German Raffles or Arsene Lupin. The films and the character were popular enough they made at least one about ‘Bob Albers’ the comic cop on Peter’s trail.
The hat and pipe worn by the actor in the 1958 film (which had a sequel) became synonymous with the character.
And I had never heard of him either until I found him on UTube.
February 9th, 2015 at 4:21 pm
David
I didn’t mean to suggest that everybody found this movie silly and sophomoric. They were plenty of commenters who saw the same movie I did, and of course they are the ones who should be complimented on their sense of good movie-making.
February 10th, 2015 at 10:22 am
I don’t know this one either. I associate Hatosy with the first role I remember him playing, one of Kevin Kline’s students in IN & OUT. He’s worked steadily since, and I’ve seen him in recent years in such television series as (the new) Hawaii Five-O and Longmire