Romance & Cigarettes is John Turturro's all-star musical, finally making it to theaters after a long run on the festival circuit.
Susan Sarandon has caught hubby James Gandolfini having an affair with Kate Winslet; daughters Mandy Moore, Mary Louise Parker, and Aida Turturro are caught in the crossfire (with casting like that, we're already clearly in a surreal world). Also on hand are Christopher Walken as Sarandon's brother (his number set to Tom Jones's "Delilah" is a highlight of the movie) and Eddie Izzard as the choir director at the local church; Elaine Stritch steals her single scene as Gandolfini's mother.
The musical numbers are done by having the actors sing along with classic pop records (in the style of this fall's TV flop Viva Laughlin, but much better done); Turturro has deliberately chosen songs and singers with oversized, melodramatic, borderline campy levels of emotion -- Engelbert Humperdinck, Dusty Springfield, Vikki Carr, Connie Francis -- in an attempt to maintain the concentrated burst of emotion that you get in a great 3-minute pop song for the length of a 2-hour movie.
Most of the actors don't consistently maintain the overheated level Turturro is aiming for, and against the backdrops of those songs, the flat moments feel even flatter. Kate Winslet, though, is fabulous as Tula; she's impossibly crude and wildly vulgar, and it's a hilarious, bravura performance. Romance & Cigarettes isn't always successful, but even in its weakest moments, it's more interesting than most of the movies that make it to the theater.
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