Fast Food Fast Women (2000)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Don't waste 90 minutes of your time on "Fast Food, Fast Women." It's annoyingly episodic script with three story lines patched together is laughably bad due to predictable writing, horrific acting, and even bad music. I found the anorexic main character upsetting to watch every time she was on screen. SHE needs the fast food.Spend the 90 minutes you'd devote to this turkey doing something more exciting...like trimming your toenails. You'd have more entertainment value.The only redeeming thing about this film is Louise Lasser, but she deserves much better than this tired script. It's as impotent as the elder guy she courts in the movie.VIEWER BEWARE!

Lasser's love scene is one of the best in the movies, and may be her best work over all. What an actress. She and Robert Modica are electric lovers as two older people, senior citizens, who fall in love, who care for each other in ways that only lovers can care. And maybe only older lovers.Loneliness and getting older are dealt with sensitively, and every movie goer who looks for something more than action will find Kolek's (the son of the famous Israeli Mayor)film moving and worth the time. Why are't there more roles for older actresses? Because there are't many actresses with Louise Lasser's sensitive emotion. She digs deep and the audience falls with her. Robert Modica is also attuned to the feelings of older men left alone.

This film ran through the art house circuit so quickly most people missed it, and that's too bad. Now it's finally beginning to show up on cable, and I hope it gets a larger audience. Amos Kollek's other films are also hard to come by in the U.S. -- I know I'D like to see more of them, after having seen this one, but this seems to have the lightest touch, from what I can tell.Among the many things it has going for it, is the incomparable Anna Thomson (Levine), a character actor I've followed since her days in the rep company of the original Tracy Ullmann Show on Fox television, through her unforgettable role in Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN, to this interesting role of Bela.Magical Realism is a kind of sub-genre I always enjoy, and when it plays against the gritty, wonderful city of New York (my home town), I sit up and take notice. This is the kind of dark underbelly of one of my favorite (also underappreciated) TV shows, Jay Tarses' "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd." If you knew and liked that, and can do with something darker and more sexually explicit, you'll probably like this.Bela triumphs, and so do her strange friends, in this pretty unique film, which is slow paced, as slice-of-life character studies are, so be prepared for that. If you tend to criticize films for being "too slow" or not having enough plot, you might not like this, but if you are happy examining characters and living with great dialogue and situations, hang in there. If you like "Smoke" or "Blue in the Face," you'll probably love this.

This is the third film I've seen pairing director Amos Kollek and actor Anna Thomson. The other two, "Sue" and "Fiona", were both great and about the most depressing things you could watch ("Sue", in fact, is a masterpiece). So I was curious to see where Kollek was going to go with this, a more light-hearted, and even comic romance. Of course, we aren't talking "Sleepless in Seattle" here, thank goodness. I have to say that while I was watching the movie, there were times whenI shook my head and said to myself, "this is bad" or "that's ridiculous". In fact, this film had many more flaws and awkward scenes than Kollek's earlier work. But at the same time, after it was all over and I was walking home, I really felt like I had seen something special.I can't explain why exactly, but one thing that was surprising is that Anna Thomson's character, while the driving force in the previous films, was comparatively dull and uninspiring and underdeveloped here. Her love interest, even moreso. But this film was buoyed by a secondary romance plot involving two 60-somethings fumbling their ways into some sort of relationship. Louise Lasser Louise Lasser, hehe, making a comeback of sorts in recent years ("Happiness"), was just wonderful. Her partner (was it Robert Modicka?) was also off-the-map charming. If I have one complaint, there wasn't enough time in the film devoted to this burgeoning romance. There is one scene involving the two that is about as tender as anything i've ever seen on the big screen. It's nice to see good love stories about middle-aged people and above and they show that often the actors, perhaps due to more experience acting, pull it off much better than most of the young and the beautiful.In sum, another winner for Kollek and Thomson, and I just wonder when, if ever, Thomson will become a star in the states (she is quite popular in France). I kind of hope she doesn't, but that's out of my own selfishness to see her in more of these kinds of films as opposed to the inevitable lure to make the big money in the bad movies. I also hope Louise Lasser continues to get more parts because she rocks. (8 out of 10)