Across the Universe et al.

I was sort of hot and cold on this one when I saw it in the TIFF book at last month's festival and I should have stuck to my instincts. Julie Taymor's Across the Universe is a baby boomer's dream come true about 1960's angst, love, loss and redemption infused with a wall-to-wall Beatles songbook. Where Moulin Rouge soared and this film fizzes are in the gaping holes of the narrative that are hard to fill with smushed strawberries and tiring psychedelic sequences of blue people in tents. Although if truth be told, the singing and choreography are solely spectacular. I would have liked to learn more of Prudence-the-lesbian from Ohio or about JoJo the guitartist's life in Detroit---hard to do with an ensemble cast that mixes a Liverpool limey looking for his GI American father who befriends an Ivy league dropout and then moves to New York in with Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix wannabes and the draft and 'Nam and the civil rights movement and police brutality and Bono the Walrus and Joe Cocker and Eddie Izzard the Kite Man and....who cares? Obviously the freedom 55 crowd that made up the majority of the audience. ***

The She Found Me
Helen Hunt wrote and directed this film about an adopted Jewish woman trying desperately to have a baby with her dolt of a husband played by the weenie Matthew Broderick. She resists adoption from her pushy dying mother and well meaning brother even after Weenie dolt dumps her and she takes up with an adorable yet exhausting and bordering-on-schizo bloke played by the edible Colin Firth. WASP queen Hunt does not have Jewish believeability despite the Sabbath candle lighting and reconnecting with birth mother (played by Bette Midler) solely because she plays the same character she always plays (i.e.Mad About You Jamie or As Good As It Gets Carol or Cast Away Kelly to name a few). ***

Married Life- My least favourite flick of this year's festivale. Chris Cooper plays Harry a middle-aged, middle-class, post-war family man having an affair with should-not-be-blonde widow Kay (Rachel McAdams). In his love for Kay, Harry decides to pop off his smart and sensual wife Pat (played by the stunning Patrica Clarkson). Plagued by jealousy, Harry's best bud Rich (Pierce Brosnan) swoons Kay for himself leaving crusty Harry with a botched murder scheme and Pat's own knickers around her ankles for some other horndog in their dysfunctional 1950's circle of Jones'. The film flops because there is positively no chemistry to be found anywhere with any of the characters. Cooper is a fine actor but Harry's character is an utterly unbelieveable paramour for lusty Kay. Even as Rich sweeps Kay off her feet, or Pat's doing the nasty at the cabin with you-hoo, there is nary an iota of lust or caution or pash or nothin'. **