Rating: R
Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 09/05/2006
Dubbed: English
Sound: DDS2.0
Run Time: 125 Minutes
Flags: Adult Situations, Adult Language
Distributor/Studio: Image Entertainment
Jennifer Jason Leigh offers an acclaimed performance as humorist
Dorothy Parker, who together with such 1920s luminaries as
Robert Benchley,
Alexander Woollcott and
George S. Kaufman, was a charter member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table. The story is related in flashback form, as Mrs.
Parker, in Hollywood to cowrite the 1937 feature
A Star is Born with her second husband Alan Campbell (
Peter Gallagher), recalls her glory days as an Algonquinite. A great deal of attention is afforded
Parker's vituperative bon mots, her alcoholism, her self-destructiveness, her suicide attempts, and her affairs with such literary contemporaries as
Charles MacArthur (an uncharacteristically unsympathetic
Matthew Broderick) and
Robert E. Sherwood (
Nick Cassavetes). The one person
Parker truly seems to care about is humorist
Robert Benchley (
Campbell Scott), who prefers to keep their friendship platonic. Director
Alan Rudolph attempts to convey the ambience of the 1920s by having dozens of that decade's luminaries appear in fleeting cameos, from Will Rogers (
Keith Carradine) to
Harpo Marx. Also featured in
Mrs. Parker are
Tom McGowan as the waspish
Alexander Woollcott and
Andrew McCarthy as
Dorothy's near-invisible first husband,
Eddie Parker.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
;)
