L.A. Blues (2007)

There is a variation on an old saying that goes ‘life is easy, comedy is hard’. Basically it tells us that making people laugh is not as simple as it may seem. For true comedy the audience has to be able to identify and more importantly empathize with the protagonists in a comedy. In the latest film by Ian Gurvitz, ‘LA Blues’ the humor comes from a group of men who are in the middle of the strangest night of their lives. The plot point here is well used in previous films. One of the men is recanting an evening of hanging out with five of his friends. This is a very tricky since the writer and director, in this case both in the person of Mr. Gurvitz, has to retain some core facts while allowing the subject viewpoints to come through. Since there is only one narrative but six stories to tell the evening seems to drag on. The line that has to be walked here is not boring the audience with watching the same basic story play out over and over. Some rare films are able to do this retelling successfully such as ‘Groundhog Day’ but that is mostly because of the unique situation that set up the premise. In ‘LA Blues’ the idea sounds promising but the execution is just not able to live up to expectations. Falling short in this particular case is not due to the cast. Some very talented actors experienced in light comedy have been assembled here. It is more that the elements just didn’t gel properly.

As the writer Gurvitz does come up with a natural and acceptable way to tell the story. Having one of the six acting as the narrator leaves a little question for the audience, which of the other five is being wheeled into the ambulance? The flashbacks basically tell the back stories of each of the friends over the past year or so. One little plot device that held some degree of promise was having the police detective questioning the man be a woman. We all know that men talk differently to a woman especially when under stress and talking about other men. As the lives of the six are disclosed the audience is expected to pick up little clues and not only figure out which man may have attempted suicide but why. Ultimately the way the stories are presented there is not enough to connect the audience with any of the men in the group resulting in not truly caring what happened. As a comedy writer Gurvitz has some excellent training. He as written scripts mostly for television series but they do include such long lasting series as ‘Frazier’, ‘Wings’ and ‘Becker’. He even had a taste of production and directing on ‘Becker’ episodes. Even though these were solid sit-coms that format is a long way from a feature film. It is understandable that Gurvitz wanted to make the move to the big screen and considering his innate talent he will most likely come up with something better than this flick. The direction feels episodic and disconnected. There is no emotional center to tie the different story lines together except all the men hung out in a bar and one of them is in the hospital. Most of the cast is best know for television sit-com work and all are funny men capable of better performances than this work permits. With all this going on perhaps the best genre would have been a true, well defined comedy. As it is the film also attempts to balance comedy and drama adding to the degree of difficulty. This was a noble attempt and with some additional seasoning Mr. Gurvitz is sure to come up with a film that meets expectations.

The film opens with a dark line ‘how are you supposed to know when a friend is thinking of killing himself?’ Immediately this sets a more somber tone making humor even more difficult to introduce. The voice is that of Bobby Gordon (Kevin Rahm). As he walks away from his car he is shocked by the loud report of a gunshot and a flash coming from the car. As his friend is being placed in the ambulance Bobby is approached by Detective Molina (Valerie Cruz). She has a few questions for him to answer. Bobby is the owner of the LA Blues bar where the guys would gather on a regular basis. Bobby is initially insulted by the woman’s questions such as if he knew the victim was depressed. They go into the bar and Bobby begins to drink as the questioning continues. The first flashback takes us about a year in the past to the day after the last New Year’s Eve party. The party was over but each of the friends drifted back in one by one. The day has barely begun but Bobby is already in the phone placing bets with his bookie. The waitress, Carla (Marsha Thomason) looks on with a disappointed look on her face. Also looking on is the first of the friends we get to meet, Neil Schwartz (Dave Foley). Neil has been trying to get Bobby to quite gambling and save for a rainy day. Neil had lost his all important Blackberry at the party and came back to retrieve it. The next to enter is Larry (Anthony Michael Hall) who is shouting over his Bluetooth cell phone headset. He is an agent looking for his client, another one of the group Jack (Sean Maguire). Paul Cooper (William Ragsdale) comes in with a young man, his nephew Adam (Nicholas D'Agosto). The group is almost complete as jack enters, also on the cell phone. At this point each of the characters has flashbacks of their own. There is nothing like recursive flashbacks to play with the pacing and continuity of a flick. In Jack’s first flashback it turns out that he was having problems with his now ex-wife (Jaime Ray Newman) and fired a couple of gunshots into the pool. He has problems and a gun; it looks too easy at this point in the film. The film then bounces back to the fateful night for a line or two of dialogue and then flashes back to the spring. This continues for the remainder of the film.

The film is dragged down by all the meaningless conversations between the friends. I know it was supposed to be guy talk and full of bragging, lies and insults but it comes across as tedious. It was too distracting since the basic nature of each of the characters was set within the first couple of minutes of screen time. The humor was supposed to come from how natural the guy talk was. This falls flat due to endless repetition of the same basic content. There was a spark or two of witty bits here but not enough to carry the work. The DVD is from Entertainment Studios through Lion’s Gate. It is admittedly well produced with full frame video and Dolby 5.1 audio. There is also a behind the scenes featurette.

Posted 03/17/08