Wednesday, April 06, 2005

David Denby

“…. The heroine of It's My Turn… is often fretful, huffy, and put-upon, yet at the same time she's so utterly protected that you want to tear away the nets beneath her to see if she falls…. It's My Turn is about a woman who has everything goin for her yet wants more; in truth, she wants the whole world to operate in her behalf.

“Weill and Bergstein must have feared that audiences would hoot at the brainy, accopmlished Kate, so they try to humanize her by turning her into a lovable klutz who trips every third step and gets her arms tangled in expensive, over-complicated clothes, and Clayburgh acts in a fake, coy, fluttery-adorable style. They nag at her in small ways while coddling her in every way that counts, and their occasional attempts to satirize her are so halfhearted and compromised that we can't be sure what is meant….

“How can we care about Kate? Her terribly pleasant dilemmas--the choice between two good jobs, two good lovers--are the kinds of things friends talk about on the telephone. She wants to eat her cake and have it too. Well, so do most of us, but who wants to see a movie about our greed? It's My Turn is embarassing because its heroine is completely self-centered, and the filmmakers don't seem to know it…. The movie is an example of what people have always disliked about the Jewish American princess--the romance of self-love.”

David Denby
New York, date?

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