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FULL FRONTAL Send This Review to a Friend
I happened to see "Signs" on the same day as "Full Frontal" and it occurs that the characters in "Full Frontal" should have been the ones under attack by the space aliens in "Signs" instead of the nice clergyman and his family. That way I could have rooted for the aliens.
"Full Frontal" is a relentlessly boring cinema exercise by director Steven Soderbergh, who as we all know has done much better. He reportedly shot this venture in 18 days, much of it digitally. The effect part of the way is sort of a grainy, cinema-verité look that goes with the effort to reveal the real lives of assorted Hollywood characters, portrayed here in layers as part of a movie within a movie structure that places the burden on the audience to figure what's really happening and what's part of inner filmmaking.
But the chief problem with Soderbergh's creative little experiment is that none of these characters are worth giving a damn about, certainly not in the context of having to listen to their self-absorbed comments in voice-overs and following them around ad infinitum through a single day with everything leading up to a birthday party for a creep of a producer. Occasionally there's a funny line or situation that provides momentary amusement and alleviation of the tedium. One tries to be generous to Soderbergh for daring to be different and subvert the usual formulas for filmmaking.
He has managed to get a notable cast together for his folly, including Julia Roberts playing a journalist doing an extended celebrity interview of an actor, a role reversal idea that is somewhat amusing. Brad Pitt has an almost non-existent cameo. Soderbergh has also cast Catherine Keener as a nervous wreck of an executive and she is always fascinating to watch no matter what the role. David Duchovny plays Gus, the producer who is to be honored, and he has a sleazy scene in which he propositions a masseuse to give him relief not included in a regular massage. Others in the guinea pig cast include Blair Underwood, Mary McCormack, Nicky Katt and David Hyde Pierce.
Perhaps the director is trying to comment on the emptiness of these character types and the milieu they inhabit, but that's a tricky thing to do without boring an audience. The "Full Frontal" title is a double entendre teasing with the image of nudity and also suggesting the laying bare of lives. But the lives we see in Soderbergh's dull opus are barely worth looking at. A Miramax Films release.
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