Full Frontal (2002)

Must See Movie...

Expected more

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

I was surprised to see the rather low IMDb score for this movie which is actually one of my top ten American independent movies of all time. It has a terrific cast, a great story and a great sub-story (or rather a sub-text to the main story), the different camera work serving as the differentiating element between the two. As a 'film within a film' type of movie, it superbly conveys the reality-fiction duality, centering on two main stories/plots: the 'real' story (shot dogma-style) and the 'fictional' story (shot in a standard way) thus allowing the viewer to distinguish between the two. It is a film about love and the search for love, the search for love in the right or wrong places, in ways which can be right or wrong. It engages with two developing love stories – one fictional, the other real. The 'fictional' story involves Roberts and Underwood's characters (him - an up-and-coming Hollywood movie star, her –a journalist doing a cover story on him). The 'real' story running in parallel is about the potentiality of human relationships, with two protagonists who have not yet met in person and, through a prolonged online communication, have arranged to finally meet in person. As the movie progresses, the sympathetic viewer's anticipation and excitement for their upcoming meeting at the "Holiday Inn" in Tucson builds up giving the impression that this 'love story in the making' is essentially the leitmotif of the movie, engaging the viewer with these two people's chance for romance and love and the opportunity to 'get it right' this time around. The ultimate reason why this movie resonates with me so deeply is the final scene of the chance encounter between the 'real' love story protagonists before they board the plane to Tucson (the irony being that both of them are based in L.A. and share a number of mutual acquaintances) with the two of them ending up sitting together on the plane. It is at this time that the viewer experiences a heart-warming 'ooooh' moment about how real love can work in mysterious ways, which is almost immediately followed by a shocking twist in the story: as the camera zooms out, what is revealed is – a movie set! Shattering all our illusions that the 'real' love story of the film will indeed develop, the ending is truly a pessimistic one, however, managing to depict in a masterful way the thin dividing line between art and life/ reality and film. Even though the film yet again confirms the age-old rule that accomplished love stories get a better chance in the fictional (movie) world, it also presents us with a challenge for a real-world chance worth taking.

This movie is totally worthless. A rating of "One" is 'way too high but IMDb does not allow a lower rating. This movie makes the best argument yet for allowing the scale to go lower. It is incoherent, hopping so much from one scene to another, from one brief beginnings of a boring, meaningless story line to another, from one group of people to another, that it is maddening. All to ultimately no purpose. Do not believe those who, in their written reviews, raise it to the level of total crap. It isn't that good. Awful doesn't quite describe it. The career of Steven Soderbergh is very checkered. This film represents his nadir (so far). The movie public can only hope that he doesn't try to go lower in stealing your money. But, beware, he might, so STAY AWAY from any future film directed by or in any way connected to Steven Soderbergh, because the people connected with that future film cannot appreciate your viewing pleasure if they hire someone who put on Full Frontal. Only by staying away from Steven Soderbergh can we win back our respectability as the movie viewing public. Speak out with your dollars and prevent Steven Soderbergh from putting out any more trash like Full Frontal.

This movie isn't a total write-off, but it's really navel-gazing at the lint that accumulates therein. It utilises the conceit of a movie within a movie...in other words, there is 'reality' in the movie, and a 'pretend' part which is the movie within a movie. The lines between these two get blurred often.If you are familiar with TV shows like "The office" (whether the UK or the US version), you will know the kind of performances to expect and the manner in which they are delivered...dry, awkward at times, etc. The cinematography is also the kind that The Office would use...hand held, fly on the wall kind of stuff. The editing seems odd at times, too...you seem to lose a second of time every now and again, and I'm not exactly sure what that is meant to be about.Script wise, the characters seem to prattle on about nothing much at all a lot of the time, but occasionally you feel that they are saying something important. That sense of importance is lessened by the fact that the characters (if not the actors themselves) are just plain bored by what they are saying. You, the viewer, can feel their pain too. The topics of importance raised in dialogue could be something like "race" and its relation to popular culture and representation.The aspects of this movie which make it rise above being a total loss are the odd scenes...there are amusing scenes like that of a theatre actor who plays Adolf Hitler in a very odd way. If you are tuned into that aspect of this movie, you will enjoy such moments.Train-spotters will enjoy the cameo appearance in this movie of well known film and TV actors-people like David Duchovny (The X Files), Brad Pitt (Se7en) and Julia Roberts (Ocean's Eleven). Duchovny's character also provides some of the absurd humour of this movie.I suppose my main issue with this film is this: is it a satire? Of Hollywood? If yes, I'm not sure that such a satire can rise above what it attempts to satirise. In other words, I'm not sure that it is any better than what it attempts to satirise.Another hypothesis that occurred to me was that the director, Steven Soderbergh, was satirising lesser talents than himself. If yes, the fact that this film doesn't really seem to have found an audience-critical or commercial, perhaps- suggests, again, that Soderbergh is on the same level as those he was seeking to satirise. Even though I don't feel that this movie is much of anything, I have to applaud Soderbergh's magnificent debut movie, I think, "Sex, lies and videotape". That's a movie where he got things right...performances and script and tone etc. In this movie, it all just feels so self-indulgent.If you are into pointed critiques of cinema or Hollywood, I recommend movies like "Barton Fink" which was very successful, I think, in satirising a certain Hollywood 'type'. To a lesser extent, I recommend Peter Greenway's "The baby of Macon". That is not a terrific movie, but I think it has perhaps the greatest scene in cinema history...where the viewer is confronted by the very nature of representation (in the infamous rape scene from that movie).This movie had its premiere, I think, on commercial Australian TV at a very late timeslot. That was appropriate. That's where I saw this film-in fact I PVRd it. If you can see this movie cheap, that would be the way to see it, I think.33/100

Don't watch this movie for Brad Pitt, he's only in there for a minute.There really isn't a plot and the character roles change. This film is more about looking at the way a movie is made and having fun while doing it.It's too bad it's not really fun for the rest of us. This movie will ruin your Friday if you bring it home from Blockbuster!!!Here's a wise suggestion: if you want to see any of these actors at their best, watch what they're famous for. You'll be better off watching reruns of Fraiser, Fightclub, X-files, etc.Did you know comments require 10 lines of text? Neither did I. That's why this line is here. And those lines up there, hold real information.