Results tagged “christinaricci”

Penelope is explicitly a modern fairy tale—even to the point of opening with "Once upon a time..." and ending with "...and they lived happily ever after"—about a young woman named Penelope (Christina Ricci), who is cursed. Her family is very old and very rich, and many years ago, a male of their number thought he'd fallen in love with a washerwoman, but ultimately broke his promise to marry her. When the woman subsequently committed suicide, her mother, a witch, put a spell on the family so that the next daughter of their line would be born with the face of a pig. Penelope is that daughter, and the only way she can break the curse is to find true love with one of her own kind. Her mother, Jessica (Catherine O'Hara), is determined to achieve this for her, and so fakes her daughter's death and then locks her away in the family mansion and brings handsome blue-blooded males in one by one, always hoping the next one will be the first to look upon Penelope's face and not run away screaming in terror.

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When we last saw Don Roos, he brought us the delightfully curdled The Opposite of Sex, the tale, mostly, of Christina Ricci’s charmingly nasty manipulatrix. With the new comedy Happy Endings, he gives us that film’s spiritual sequel, now improved with even more deceit and backstabbing, and freighted with a cargo of object lessons and observations on the politics of reproduction. Whereas Opposite of Sex was a story about, and told by, Ricci’s mendacious Dede Truitt, Happy Endings divides its attention among no fewer than eight major characters. Taking the place of Ricci’s narration is extensive captioning; the voice of the writer, as it turns out, who has as much an agenda as poor Dede, though probably somewhat less contempt for the characters. The captions serve a dual purpose. First, they provide swift exposition for a movie that already runs over two hours. Second, and more importantly, they provide a sympathetic and sometimes defensive advocate for characters who often behave indefensibly. (Caption: In their defense, they are at their funniest on their worst behavior <-- See, it works!) At the center of the movie are step-siblings Mamie (Lisa Kudrow, Friends) and Charley (Steve Coogan, Spider-Man 2). Following a pregnancy scare as teenagers, Charley comes out and gets a vasectomy, while Mamie ostensibly gets an abortion, but in fact gives the baby up for adoption. Twenty years later, each has to confront how the incident shaped their attitudes toward having kids.