Sadly Over-hyped

Just perfect...

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

At first, Anna Thomson's bot-ox lips, nose job, and silicone distracted me. I notice that this look is big in Hollywood, the bee stung lips of so many movie stars, their big boobs on a starved stick of a body makes the young guys pant, but the girls can't possibly match the impossible can they? Anna is an educated woman that has rejected Wall Street to work as a waitress in a diner. She's 35 and her mom's applying the pressure. Her Broadway paramour, a married man has strung her along since she was 23. Enter Jamie Harris, starving taxicab driving, failed novelist. Suddenly ex-wife dumps Jamie's kid plus one on him. Naturally through a series of unlikely big city moments, Anna and Jamie hook up, lose each other, and love.Then there's the autumn autumn match of still spry, 70 year old Robert Modica and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, ex-Woodie Allen wife Louise Lasser. This relationship of seasoned citizens so rare in film took the show away from the yougen's. We cared whether or not sweet, only had sex with someone he loved, Modica can get it up for willing Lasser. We hoped the drugstore was stocked with Viagara.The screenplay offered some silly city shtick, New York City hip, but these scenes fall flat; nevertheless, this one, the babe and I enjoyed.

My girlfriend and I were stunned by how bad this film was. After 15 minutes we would have called it quits except we were too curious to see if the film could possibly redeem itself. It didn't.I can't understand the praise given to this film. The writing was downright awful and delivered by some of the worst acting I have seen in a very long time.One thing that especially annoyed me about this film was that often when people were talking to each other there was an unnatural pause between lines. I understand using a pause to create a feeling of awkwardness (like in Happiness). This was not that type of pause -- it was just simply bad directing. This film might actually be much better with subtitles, and maybe the overseas market is the best one for this film, because then the innane dialogue and bad acting wouldn't be noticed as much.I generally like these types of small quirky films (The Real Blonde, Walking and Talking, Lovely and Amazing), but this one failed on so many levels that I consider it one of the very worst films I have sat through in the last few years.

This film ran through the art house circuit so quickly most people missed it, and that's too bad. Now it's finally beginning to show up on cable, and I hope it gets a larger audience. Amos Kollek's other films are also hard to come by in the U.S. -- I know I'D like to see more of them, after having seen this one, but this seems to have the lightest touch, from what I can tell.Among the many things it has going for it, is the incomparable Anna Thomson (Levine), a character actor I've followed since her days in the rep company of the original Tracy Ullmann Show on Fox television, through her unforgettable role in Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN, to this interesting role of Bela.Magical Realism is a kind of sub-genre I always enjoy, and when it plays against the gritty, wonderful city of New York (my home town), I sit up and take notice. This is the kind of dark underbelly of one of my favorite (also underappreciated) TV shows, Jay Tarses' "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd." If you knew and liked that, and can do with something darker and more sexually explicit, you'll probably like this.Bela triumphs, and so do her strange friends, in this pretty unique film, which is slow paced, as slice-of-life character studies are, so be prepared for that. If you tend to criticize films for being "too slow" or not having enough plot, you might not like this, but if you are happy examining characters and living with great dialogue and situations, hang in there. If you like "Smoke" or "Blue in the Face," you'll probably love this.

I went to see this movie having read several wonderful reviews. Unfortunately, i believe it to be one of the worst movies i have seen in recent years. The acting was quite poor, the storyline never really picks up and the ending comes out of nowhere; starting off very realistically and ending rather fantastically. It does not help that the lead actress, Anna Thompson, is incredibly difficult to watch onscreen in all her plastic glory. It is hard to take her seriously as a person, let alone as an actress. Her mouth is so tight that she appears expressionless throughout the film. Her character is barely developed and you never feel any sympathy for her or ultimately care what happens to her.It seems as though the script was written in a stream of consciousness mode where storylines only barely interconnect and no theme is ever developed thoroughly. There are three groups of people, all in different age brackets, who seem to be searching for love. The senior characters are most thoroughly developed and the best cast. One at least feels something for them and their storyline is seomwhat interesting. The middle-aged characters, however, the protaganists of the film -Bruno and Bella- are all over the place and never really figure anything out. They never talk things out and we never really know what they're feeling for one another until we overhear Bruno speaking to someone about Bella. Then there are the small children, who seem to appear in the film almost accidentally since they barely have anything to do with the rest of the movie. They appear in only ONE speaking scene which leaves the viewer with an impression that they are completely superfluous.All in all, i thought "Fast Food, Fast Women" was a poor excuse for a film. There were many untied ends or confusing elements throughout the various plots (eg: Bella's mother coming to visit toward the end or, SPOILER: Bruno's affair with Emily) and scenes that seemed unneccesary or made little sense (eg: Vitka's son coming to learn to use the PC, the bum living below Bella's apartment). For the tiny bit of entertaining dialogue the old men provide in their park and diner scenes, one is much better off watching old Woody Allen movies or Seinfeld reruns. Don't waste your time or money on this one.