Music from Another Room (1998)
Music From Another Room is a romantic comedy that follows the exploits of Danny, a young man who grew up believing he was destined to marry the girl he helped deliver as a five year old boy when his neighbor went into emergency labor. Twenty-five years later, Danny returns to his hometown and finds the irresistible Anna Swann but she finds it easy to resist him since she is already engaged to dreamboat Eric, a very practical match. In pursuit of Anna, Danny finds himself entangled with each of the eccentric Swanns including blind, sheltered Nina, cynical sister Karen, big brother Bill and dramatic mother Grace as he fights to prove that fate should never be messed with and passion should never be practical.
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Powerful
hyped garbage
it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.
The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
As a little boy, Jude Law (as Danny Kowalski), helped deliver a baby. Because his hand was small, young "Danny" (Cory Buck) was able to reach in, and uncurl the umbilical cord from around the neck of the baby. So, the baby girl is born healthy; and, the little boy, who will grow up to be Jude Law, declares, "I'm gonna marry her." Twenty-five years later, Law returns to Los Angeles, from an education in London. He loses his girlfriend, and has trouble finding employment; he's a tile artist. Then, while delivering a cake, he returns to the house where he long ago delivered the baby; she has grown into beautiful Gretchen Mol (as Anna Swan). Law falls madly in love with Ms. Mol, and wants to fulfill his childhood pledge to marry her; but, she is pledged to another man.Swan family matriarch Brenda Blethyn (as Grace Swan) enables womb-reaching Law to become a employee/companion to the family; but, despite his close quarters, he finds Mol a tough love-nut to crack. Law is a very likable leading man, but his romantic interest in, and rapport with, Mol is nil. He might have been better off considering Martha Plimpton (as Karen Swan). The most entertaining relationship occurs between blind sister Jennifer Tilly (as Nina Swan) and Spanish savior Vincent Laresca (as Jesus). By the way, they meet in a nightclub where males are stabbed for refusing accept an invitation to dance; still, the place is crowded.Director/writer Charlie Peters includes many references to Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina". Julian Lennon's "Day After Day" leads off a sweet soundtrack. In short, the leading relationship would have been more interesting with Ms. Plimpton as "Anna". Ms. Blethyn and Mr. Laresca contribute strong supporting characterizations.***** Music from Another Room (4/24/98) Charlie Peters ~ Jude Law, Gretchen Mol, Jennifer Tilly
I laughed through most of the first hour while admiring the beautiful faces of the two co-stars, rooting for those nice kids to get together, and enjoying the rapid-fire dialog and antics of the heroine's family members. I think the sister-with-the gun scenes are over the top and distracting, and the ending's a little weak, but the writing and acting are, mostly, topnotch. Jennifer Tilly is cast against type and does fine in the role, as does Jon Tenney as that stock character, the jilted fiancé. Romantic comedies are hard to come by. If you can skip the more sentimental scenes, it's a real find. And it's PG-13 -- no murders, explosions, or car chases.
But it didn't come out right. It's as if they started out to make a serious film and then handed it over to a Wes Anderson type at the last minute. Plot lines that start in a good direction turn unexpectedly goofy. And some side plots that are meant to add humor--Martha Plimpton and her gun, for instance--are simply annoying.Jude Law plays a scrawny bakery delivery boy who doesn't know when to shut up, and Gretchen Mol is the uptight sophisticate of her family who is already engaged to a man who is perfect for her. He drives the right car and bails her family out financially--she needs those things. So when he wants to buy her a book for her birthday instead of a flowered knit cap--well, Gretchen's character isn't the flowered knit cap type, and all the romantic lecturing of Jude's character about the hat vs. the book, however right in theory, doesn't change that. The movie never satisfactorily established why Gretchen would fall for Jude--in fact, the scene (SPOILER ALERT) where Gretchen and Jude get together, and then the next day she can hardly look at him--that was true to character. What happened later was not.The best and most believable characters in the film were the mother, well acted by Brenda Blethyn, and the blind sister (Meg Tilly) and her boyfriend, Jesus. I loved Jesus! One last comment--whoever chose the music for this film should be shot--there's one really bad top-40 pop song that cues in more than once when Jude and Gretchen go for the kiss, and it cheapens the scenes.
"Music from another room" was based on Drama genre. Actually, what makes it nice is the purity and the simplicity of the character's lives. The definitions that LAW and MOL make between themselves are very well organized. But there's something I'd like to know...Has the movie "Proposal" (starring Robert Redford, Demi Moore) been made before that (1998) or not? I guess you know what I mean...the coin thing...the coin with two identical faces, the same as the one in "Proposal".Benjamin