The Real Blonde 1998, Rated R

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Starring Matthew Modine, Daryl Hannah, et al.

My biggest problem with The Real Blonde was the way in which DiCillo's script follows the lives of--how should I put this--human wastes of space. Most fictional characters have at least one positive trait or redeeming quality with which the viewer can identify. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule when screenwriters deal with evil step-mothers and characters who are supposed to be the human embodiment of the devil, but when dealing with a slice-of-life portrayal of poor, thirtysomething, performing artists in New York City, this is not as forgivable.

Matthew Modine stars as an actor/waiter, a job description at which he is equally talentless, who lives with the increasingly annoying Catherine Keener, who is a hair stylist. Modine auditions for just about anything filmed on camera, and Keener, in a particularly obvious displa.html>spla.html>spla.html>spla.html>splay of feminist sarcasm, suggests that should the fashion director of the photo shoot she is working on want to capture 'exotic', she should have the female model having simulated sex with a poodle. Modine's friend, the very British Maxwell Caulfield, gets cast in a day-time soap opera, and has lots of dressing room sex with his co-star Daryl Hannah.

If you are raising a wondering eyebrow about the lack of perceptual energy in The Real Blonde, you're doing so for good reason. Despite it's many big name stars, including Modine, Hannah, Christopher Lloyd, Denis Leary, Buck Henry, Dave Chappelle, and Elizabeth Berkeley, The Real Blonde is a tired film that has neither the intensity nor desire of an U.S. army training video. This was a well paced, but incredibly shallow journey into the lives of Modine, Keener, and Caulfield. In this respect, The Real Blonde is vaguely reminiscent of Gary Fleder's Things to do in Denver When You're Dead; an unstructured look at unscrupulous and unlikable characters, in a screenplay it would be an overstatement to even call meandering.

The theme of hair color--whether a person is a "real blonde"--is present throughout this film's entirety. At first, I wondered if this was a not so well guarded poke at the superficiality of Hollywood and the movie industry, but as DiCillo's script began to indiscriminately investigate this, and goes so far as to make Caulfield's character have a fetish about true blondes--he can't respect a girl who isn't a real blonde--the theme lost any meaning it might have otherwise held.

The lone bright spot in The Real Blonde came in the form of Bridget Wilson, who plays a sort of disenfranchised model, in love with the English jackass, Caulfield. However, unfortunately, the reason I was drawn to Wilson's character was because she was, in my sense of the word, normal. Her apartment has posters on the wall (thumbs up to the set decorator for a poster of a perfume called 'Depression'), little knickknacks on the shelves, and she doesn't take any radically anti-male, or anti-human viewpoints. Next to Caulfield, a sleaze, Keener, a hostile female, Modine, a complete loser, and Hannah, a brainless slut, Wilson stood out like Dennis Rodman in Amish country.

It's not a good sign when I watch a film and feel cheap after screening it, but such was the case with The Real Blonde. DiCillo's Living in Oblivion examined the same types of individuals--Keener and Steve Buscemi were actually in both films--but without the humorously twisted characters and interesting plot material of Living in Oblivion, The Real Blonde turned out to be a real bomb.