Best movie ever!

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

In Auntie Mame, the theme of which bears some similarity to this movie, a woman who has been used to living the good life suddenly finds herself destitute. She and her nephew Patrick (Patrick Dennis who wrote the story) try to cope through a series of amusing situations as Mame hopes to land a wealthy, loving husband. At one point she tries her hand at working as a salesclerk in a department store with disastrous results.In My One and Only, Anne, who is used to living the good life decides to leave her husband, taking with her limited funds, some jewelry and her two sons, including son George (who supposedly authored the story as a biographical sketch). They head west in a new Cadillac and attempt to cope with a series of not amusing, somewhat absurd situations as she tries to land a husband to support them, evincing little interest in how loving or suitable the men she meets might be as husbands or fathers to her sons and, apparently??, without ever divorcing the husband she left behind. At one point she tries her hand at working as a waitress and picking up random men in a bar with disastrous results. Rosalind Russell, and later Lucille Ball, played Mame, both turning in great performances with a lot of spirit and humor. Renée Zellweger appeared to drag herself through this movie in what can only be described as a flat, unenthusiastic performance. All she did was pucker her lips and squint, whenever anyone told her she was beautiful, which happened every few minutes. All the men she met along the way were flawed in some major, often sinister way. As another reviewer said, every significant older male in the story was presented in a negative way.Since the story was supposedly biographical, I guess what happened must have been at least partially based on reality, but a good deal of it was pretty far-fetched. Once they reach Hollywood they find themselves as extras on a movie set. Anne hurts her foot in one scene, the producer rushes over and based on that he agrees to give her second son a chance to play a lead role in another movie although he possesses no talent or meaningful experience. George intervenes and the rest, as they say, is history, the details of which would require a spoiler alert … although as a hint, things took a turn not dissimilar from events in another great Rosalind Russell movie, Gypsy,as Baby June cedes her place to her sister.Logan Lerman and Kevin Bacon turned in decent performances. The Cadillac was quite nice. Renée Zellweger limped through her role and the rest of the cast phoned it in. The screen play of the biography was illogical, lacked any depth, full of holes, neither amusing nor dramatic, and torturous. A waste of time.

It's 1953. Ann Deveraux (Renée Zellweger) lives with her womanizing band leader husband Danny (Kevin Bacon) and her two sons George (Logan Lerman) and Robbie (Mark Rendall) in NYC. After catching him with the latest indiscretion, Ann walks out on him. She's a flaky clueless mother and goes on a cross country road trip looking for a new man.This shows that Renée Zellweger is actually a real actresses. She's given a couple of great lines and a fascinating character. She does a pretty good job. Logan Lerman is a good young actor. He plays George Hamilton's character in the semi-biopic. It feels a little light weight and meandering. Maybe I just don't know much about George Hamilton or a fan of his work. He's always been just a caricature of the Hollywood guy with too dark of a tan. So I'm not naturally interested in his life.

It is New York in the spring of 1953. Renée Zellweger as Anne Deveraux comes home to find her husband in his underwear and a young tart in the bed. She huffs off, pulls her two sons out of school, and leaves town. And thus begins the fateful summer that is this story.Kevin Bacon is her philandering husband, Dan Devereaux, musician and band director, the type of band that plays in clubs in the 1950s, with a cute young female singer at the front. Dan is a boy inside that looks like a grown man.One of the sons is Logan Lerman as George Devereaux. In a sense he is the narrator of the story. As he tells the audience, it all begins when he shows up at a Cadillac dealership with a wad of money to buy a car. The salesmen are flabbergasted, but it all makes sense when his mother shows up. They needed a new car to leave town.Anne is one of those elegant 1950s women who doesn't think she should work, and therefore her road trip becomes one to find a suitable husband, one who can support her. The summer is filled with surprises, and that is what makes this movie so interesting, we never quite know what the next surprise is.Really good, interesting movie, one of the better ones I have seen lately.SPOILERS: Anne and the two sons end up in Los Angeles and, to make ends meet become extras in movie production. The "other" son gets a chance at acting but when George returns from his father's funeral, begins to show his brother how to read the lines in a more believable manner. He is noticed, and he gets the part, while the brother gets into costume design, what he really wants to do anyway. And, George decides to use his father's real last name, Hamilton. This is based on the real George Hamilton.

Altogether an enjoyable film, despite a few lengthy bits when the familiar pattern (middle aged blonde with two sons realizes the man she has set to marry is a jerk) seems to repeat itself once too many. I really liked the truthfulness of the depiction of America's 1950s, all the way to Zellweger's mannerisms typical of the times, the dirt roads, the breeches, the hotel detective. Support actors were good as well, though Bacon does'nt get much screen presence. A lot of humorous lines make the conversation interesting to follow, and the heroine's string of unlucky encounters also play to good laughs.But quite a few items irked me, from the overly black and white depiction of lecherous men, to the pale acting of the two sons, to the frightening number of times Zellweger was told she was 'beautiful' (we get it, middle aged men are horny, she's blonde, but puh-lease, her chemically/surgically enhanced frozen-featured face simply isn't attractive - then again, she does get the word 'old' bandied at her a few times so I guess the director thought a trade off was necessary).Overall, the film really lacked in-depth characterization and relied too much on its fickle road movie charm to wind its way to a somewhat trite and tepid ending.