DVDs:

	State and Main Michael Higgins, Michael Bradshaw New Line Home Video, 2001 average customer review:based on 71 reviews view larger image
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Welcome to David Mamet's State and Main, the acclaimed writer-director's funniest and most accessible film to date, propelled by the rocket fuel of Mamet's show-biz experience and driven by an ensemble cast that simply couldn't be better. Naturally, the writer's dilemma is the meatiest one--will he be noble or sell out?--and Mamet arrives at a solution that's as hilarious as it is morally justified. Along the way, the rigors of filmmaking are explored with farcical abandon, such as how to provide a high-tech product placement... in a 19th-century story. Mamet's razor-sharp dialogue is gourmet popcorn here--each kernel yields a tasty surprise--and the whole scenario (intentionally modeled in the style of Preston Sturges) plays out with the breezy assurance of vintage screwball comedy. It's pure gold from start to finish, and even the closing credits offer another reason to laugh. --Jeff Shannon

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Best Thing on Film Ever

This is one of the very few movies that both my wife and I love and have watched several times and never get sick of it. It is hard to believe that David Mamet has something this good inside of him - it has to do with people not crime and violence.

If you like this one, you will probably like "Breaking Away", "Strictly Ballroom", "Dirty Dancing", "What Planet Are You From?" (Mike Nichols), and the Burt Reynolds classic "The End" (the movie for people who don't even like Burt Reymolds).


Mamet Sparkles

"That's absurd."
"So is our electoral system, but we still vote."

Few people can cut through the nonsense with as much wit as David Mamet, and in State and Main, the writer/director puts his talents to great use. The movie shows us the insides of filmmaking, a view that manages to be both ugly and hilarious. The cast, for the most part, is great, particularly William H. Macy and Philip Seymour Hoffman. If you're looking for vintage Mamet, you can't go wrong with State and Main.

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"GO HUSKIES!"

It sure sounds familiar. A Hollywood film crew causes havoc in a small American town while filming a movie. It seems they were kicked out of a previous small town due to the lead actor's (Alec Baldwin), penchant for young teenage girls. And it's deja vu all over again.

What I liked about "State and Main" is it's treatment of the small town locals as being as sophisticated, savvy, and in the case ot the young teenage girl, promiscuous as the blindsided big city moviemakers, while never abandoning it's Rockwellian small town charm, or it's big city smarts. It's a perfect marriage of the two cultures clashing, never wallwoing in the expected morales and pathos of its conflict.

The ensemble cast takes David Mamet's witty and clever script and flesh out the characters to sharp edged precision and humor. William H. Macy is perfectly and forgivingly corrupt as the film's director, (he'd kill a horse to make a dead horse scene look real), and Rebecca Pidgeon radiates a secure small town confidence as the local book store owner forced to abandon her plans for a community play, while setting her sights on the film's morally conflicted writer.

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Small town USA meets big city slickers

This comedy takes the unoriginal concept of bringing big-town city-slickers to small-town real folk, but in fairness, they try to add a few new twists. Overall, it didn't work for me. A movie crew takes over a small Vermont town, and even though this movie has a couple of big, expensive stars, they arrive on the scene without a script. No problem, they've brought along a script writer, who has had some experience writing plays. The male star, Alec Baldwin, is a notorious pedophile whose vice is tolerated by everyone. "Everyone needs a hobby," is his excuse. The female star, Sarah Jessica Parker, is a typical prima donna. The script writer is a confused, conflicted, ambivalent mess, with no gift for verbal expression, and it is a wonder that he has achieved any success with his writing. The Vermonters do not come off as stereotypical, but they don't come off as normal, either. The big-city slickers are excessively vulgar, as if to underscore that they are big-city slickers. As a light comedy, this film has its moments, but since one theme of the film is about second chances, I would not watch this film a second time, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone even for a first time

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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