Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Comedies
Theatrical Release:Sep 12, 2003 Limited
MooPig Movie Review :: "Dummy" [2003]
by Pat Darnell and Cecil B Toothelong
Starring: Adrien Brody, Milla Jovovich, Illeana Douglas, Vera Farmiga
Director: Gregory Pritikin
72% on the Tomatometer
MooPig's Synopsis: Wedding Planner finds her voice and gets finally rid of her stalking ex-fiance’.
MooPig Movie Reviewer, Cecil B Toothelong, considers Dummy one of the best Woody Allen school of Jew-ploitation cinema knock-off’s yet. "Dummy corrects all the bad timing and lack of emotion of those era Woody films," remarks Cecil.
"Dummy almost makes me want to establish a family Wedding Planners business... for real," says Cecil. Components of a marriage ceremony and celebration are risks that must be mitigated or else, the event will not happen. It seems Dummy documents a theory of risk management. It says: All conflicts converge on the outset of any project. Those conflicts arrive precisely with the people themselves who are responsible for the wedding’s outcome.
Mitigating, or anticipating, organizational antagonisms in achieving “plans to completion” are our major themes in Dummy. Don’t be fooled, it has been consistent themes of all human concerns for over five hundred years of wedding history.
“Trust” is the “brass key” being passed between sisters, mothers, grandmothers, dads, wedding singers, caterers, and would be lovers, throughout Dummy. The mastery in the film is in reduction of monologue by cutting out long whiney silloquy. Purposeful bursts of one-liner quips, float the plotted action of the many figurehead characters.
Lots of funny metaphors: for instance, all the available spinster women using TRP, temporary restraining order, as a solution to keep away impotent ex, who is shooting blanks, is a gaff, no?
“Can I trust you with my wants, desires and dreams,” Dummy’s characters prey upon each other repeatedly. No one is exempt from the lunacy, not even the dummy.
One best line is at the dinner table of the Dummy and ventriloquist’s house one evening. Adrien Brody as the movie's Ventriloquist invites his romantic hopeful, single mother Lorena, and her wizened young daughter to dinner; where his mother asks Lorena if she is Jewish. The answer is “I’m Italian,” to which the mother replies “... all the same.”
Dave Litton at Movie Eye says: "There is a sweetness at the center of his character that comes through in his relationship with Lorena, and their quiet, budding romance soon becomes the film's emotional core. ( Copyright @ Hauntnut.com ; David Litton HERE)"
On a scale of ‘Five fingers up your back side’ -- Jeff-Dunham-style-vernacular -- ‘secular Ventriloquist Award,’ MooPig decides Dummy is a full frontal four fingers.
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