Rating: R
Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 07/13/1999
SubTitles: French
Dubbed: English
Sound: DD5.1/DD2
Run Time: 110 min
Distributor/Studio: Polygram USA Video
For the follow-up to
In the Company of Men, the misogyny-on-parade debut that became an out of nowhere indie hit, auteur
Neil LaBute wrote and directed a piece that gives more equal representation to the shortcomings of both genders than his earlier film. Three men stand on one side:
Cary (
Jason Patrick), a womanizing doctor who rehearses make-out lines and keeps his body almost grotesquely ripped;
Jerry (
Ben Stiller), a self-obsessed theater instructor who chews over every emotion like a morsel of dessert; and
Barry (
Aaron Eckhart), a man grown soft in his marriage to a woman who can't satisfy him sexually as well as he can himself. On the other side we have three equally well-defined women:
Terri (
Catherine Keener), a writer/editor whose prefers to keep words out of the bedroom, much to the chagrin of live-in beau
Jerry;
Mary (
Amy Brenneman), a freelance writer whose attempts to find her own sexual fulfillment with both husband
Barry and paramour
Jerry meet with a similar lack of success; and
Cheri (
Nastassja Kinski), an art assistant who meets most of the other characters one by one at a gallery but directs her sylph-like affections in an unexpected direction. The lies, double-crosses, and confrontations between these characters resolve into a sinisterly comic indictment of the very idea of romantic fulfillment.
~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
