Cookie's Fortune

viewed November 21, 1999 on video

For more information about this film, click here.

Robert Altman presents his version of the New South, consciously confronting Old South stereotypes about race relations, gentility and backwardness and substituting them with a community of characters that is very... cute.  Scenes like a murder suspect, his lawyer and the sheriff playing Scrabble in a jail cell, or two women ducking through police tape to collect antiques from the home of a murdered relative, are consciously quirky, but not much more.  I'm surprised that I feel this way, since I think there should be more movies that try to depict unique communities, and reflect their way of life in their own terms.  Perhaps it's Altman who is calling too much attention to the eccentricities of these folk, and his own cleverness in exposing them.  Or more importantly, that there's not much depth to these eccentricities; they're a lot of fun, but not much to take home.  They're just... cute.

His slyness is found in the opening sequence when the Charles S. Dutton character stumbles through town inebriated, Altman sets the audience up with the image of the reckless Negro before turning it on its ear.  Patricia Neal's poignant grand old belle suicide is punctuated with a surprising, hilarious flurry of goose feathers.  Otherwise we have the equivalent of a Southern sitcom, with a dozen quirky characters involved in a web of subplots.  

Among this cast I found Chris O'Donnell to be the biggest surprise, disarmingly funny as an inept novice cop -- like Woody Harrelson in his dim-witted glory days at Cheers, except that he's hornier.  Whiny, pouty Liv Tyler is less successful as his love interest.  Glenn Close does what the movie wants her to do, and with all of her experience playing histrionic women types, she fills the role capably.  The cast in general carries on like they were having a grand old time throughout the whole shoot.  There's nothing to hate about this film, it's pleasurable to watch, means well and is pretty to look at, but there's not much to get excited about either.

Roger Ebert seems to be more delighted with this film than me.

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