A true delight from start to finish!
All the more surprise, then, that this is a cool, funny, relatively relaxed (for him) movie. Even his wife Rebecca Pidgeon, usually the worst offender in terms of patented Mametian woodenness, loosens up a bit. Films about film-making tend to be a bit of a busman's holiday, and this is no exception, but there is a generally unbuttoned and charming feel to the whole thing that makes you forgive a lot.
The message, cause despite what Mamet would like to think, there is one, is unsurprisingly unoriginal - small-town folk are More Real than those Hollywood Weirdos. But it's lovely to see Philip Seymour Hoffman, usually cast as a sweaty, giggling deviant, as the romantic lead. William H. Macy, an old Mamet crony, is his usual excellent self, and Alec Baldwin does a lovely line in planetarily self-absorbed comedy. Even Sarah-Jessica Parker, who normally I can't stand, is a scream as the starlet who won't get her kit off for the camera but is perfectly happy to do it for the screenwriter.
The plot is given far too much attention. With a movie like this, we care more about incidental moments, or at any rate moments that _seem_ to be incidental - and Mamet is such a control freak, he can't stand it if our eyes are distracted from anything but the Development of the Story and the Revelation of Character, etc. etc. I'll never believe he's a real director. But he has, at last, delivered a fun film, even if I don't know how he did it. So fair play to him, as we say in my town.
Three stars, because good as this is, there a lot of other films out there, by people less respected and famous, which are a lot better. But if you've already seen them, try this.
