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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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Your Gateway to Music and More from a Christian Perspective Slow down as you approach the gate, and have your change ready.... |
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All the Real Girls Stars: Paul Schneider, Zooey Deschanel, Patricia Clarkson, and Shea Whigham Director/Scriptwriter: David Gordon Green Sony Pictures Classics Running Time: one hour and 45 minutes Rating: R Awards: Winner, Special Jury Prize For Emotional Truth at Sundance 2003 All the Real Girls is a beautifully photographed film, shot in the Great Smoky Mountains, but beyond this scenario, whatever emotional truths are present are bogged down with twenty-year-old whines--unless that is an emotional truth in itself. Director-writer David Gordon Green presents the story of the local lothario, Paul (Paul Schneider from George Washington), who finally meets "the one" and gets turned on his head. The film is arranged with groups of people talking to each other, and then between dialogues are the mountains, lakes and rivers of the south. The after-high school guys sit around talking about girls while the after-high school girls sit around talking about guys. Eventually, a truth is revealed, and it is stated by one of the girls: if you want to make something out of yourself, get out of this mill town. After the girls have slept with many guys in this small town, and the guys have slept with the girls, what else is there to do? Paul, who claims to have slept with 26 girls, is a love-'em-and-leave-'em type. No commitment for him. Enter Noel (Zooey Deschanel), the younger sister of Paul's friend, Tip (Shea Whigham). Noel is returning to the town from boarding school and casts a doe-eyed look in Paul's direction. In the meantime, Paul and his mother, Elvira (Patricia Clarkson from Far From Heaven) don't get along. Paul's father is long absent, and to make ends meet, Elvira performs at local events as a clown, sometimes taking Paul with her. Elvira is one unhappy lady whose story would make a film in itself, but we don't hear it. Neither do we hear why Tip's sister went to boarding school, which would have been expensive. These loose ends are a few from All The Real Girls which make it a frustratingly slow film to follow. The dialogue drags with such phrases as "Awww, I don't wanna do that," or "What's he (or she or it or whatever) doing?" After this dialogue there is either a sex scene or the camera scans the countryside. There is plenty of time to go out for popcorn and not miss anything. Paul Schneider manages to make Paul believable as a guy who goes from one conquest to another. However, since Zooey Deschanel's Noel is such an indecisive character, when she finally tells a personal secret, who cares? The one humorous moment in the film comes when the guys take Elvira's compact car and enters it in a car race. By the time they finish one lap, the race is almost over. The guys don't realize it, but they are the compact car, out of place with the rest of the world, which is passing them by. Copyright 2003 Marie Asner
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