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August 27, 1999/15 Elul 5759, Vol. 51, No.47
'Muse' is lackluster comedy
CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer
When discussing a comedy titled "The Muse," it's tempting to attempt some sort of pun involving the title, something "a-muse-ing." And if Albert Brooks' new comedy were a little funnier, such a pun would be a natural introduction to a review. The problem with Albert Brooks' new comedy is that mildly amusing is about all this movie manages to be.
Brooks is known for making funny movies that offer a keen perspective about life. He's even won awards, such as for "Lost in America" and "Mother," which earned the Best Screenplay Award from the National Society of Film Critics. The latter film also won the New York Film Critics Circle and the ShoWest Best Original Screenplay awards.
However, "The Muse" offers little, if any, insight into any aspect of life and isn't really all that funny. That doesn't mean there aren't a few funny scenes, an occasional noteworthy quip, but there simply aren't enough to maintain a 97-minute film.
Brooks, who wrote and directed, portrays comfortably successful screenwriter Steven Phillips as a sort of a Hollywood "everyman." He has a beautiful wife, two beautiful daughters, two nice cars and a comfortable job writing action flicks for Paramount Studios. That comfortable life, however, becomes threatened when a stereotypically too-young-and-oh-so-smarmy studio executive cans Phillips, suggesting he's "lost his edge."
Suddenly, Phillips is on the outs with all of the studios; he can't find anybody who wants him.
He turns to his best friend, an incredibly successful, Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Jeff Bridges) who confides to Phillips the secret of his success - he has a muse. Not just any muse, but a real Greek-mythology, one-of-Zeus'-daughters, beautiful-as-a-goddess muse named Sarah (Sharon Stone) who just happens to have a thing about getting expensive gifts from Tiffany's.
Within 24 hours of meeting this woman, Phillips is setting her up in a $1,700-a-night room at the Four Seasons, taking her laundry to the dry cleaners and doing her grocery shopping at the local health-food specialty store.
As Sarah becomes more and more involved in Phillips' life, and the lives of his wife and kids, she becomes increasingly disruptive, not to mention expensive. She is, however, providing him the inspiration she said she would so he can write a sure-fire hit movie. Phillips finally is forced to weigh his own family and career values.
One of the film's biggest weaknesses is the way it's peppered with Hollywood celebrities and movie references. Though it's obviously hard to make a movie that takes place in Tinsel Town without doing some name dropping and industry jargon, it's done with so little style that it's almost an insult to the moviegoer. For a satirical look at the biz, you'd be much better off renting "The Player."
In a comedy that's little more than amusing, and with little more than pedestrian commentary on the human condition, the movie goer naturally hopes for at least a big payoff at the end. Instead, the movie also rushes to the end as if Brooks simply wanted to get the thing over and done with. Brooks just doesn't deliver.
Maybe he needs a better muse.
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