Perhaps Turturro’s shallow writing in Fading Gigolo is enabled by having too many friends in the business telling him his wacky script is clever or even plausible. I never felt a thing for any character, or had any sense of who these people were past being comic sets-ups for some clichéd idea about the bittersweet nature of true love. It careens aimlessly. Since his actors were reduced to lines that never sounded anything but scripted, I was both removed from the story and increasingly annoyed. Is it supposed to be funny that Jewish Woody Allen lives in a scroungy apartment with a black girlfriend? And why is he sounding like a Woody in a budget Woody Allen movie? And as a pimp? Ugh. Turturro is charming and well meaning, which READ MORE .... |