Spout received some copies of this film, and I was asked if I would like one to review. Because I have a high respect for William H. Macy, I said ok and, thus, will forego the test for this entry. I think Mr. Macy is an amazing character actor who is very good at being a chameleon, and without reading too deeply into the premise of this film, I was sold by his presence in it and by the fact that he also co-wrote the screenplay. I thought it had potential to be pretty funny, because I think Mr. Macy has a great gift for humor, particularly irony and sarcasm, based on characters he has previously played (Fargo, anyone?). Also, while Meg Ryan is not my favorite actress, I don't dislike her either. Her films have been, on average, pleasant, and no one can argue that she is not well suited to romantic comedy. Therefore, The Deal could have been quite the steal--except that it turned out to be boring and predictable and true to its formulaic genre. What's worse, I never laughed once.
Mr. Macy plays Charlie Berns, a down-on-his-luck Hollywood producer who's made one good film and has been on a downward spiral ever since. He's prepared to end it all, his life included, until his nephew Lionel (Jason Ritter) appears at his window with a script in hand depicting the life and times of 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. While the script has real potential as an art house picture, Charlie decides to go for one last hurrah and con a major studio into financing (for $100 million) an action film loosely based on about five rewrites of the script, which would feature renowned action star and recent convert to Judaism, Bobby Mason (LL Cool J). Mason will only work for the picture if it contains spiritually Jewish themes. Also, to get the funding, Charlie must go through an ambitious studio executive named Deidra Hearn (Ryan), to whom he finds himself oddly attracted. Of course, in classic screwball manner, she's engaged to be married, refined, intelligent, and more than a little skeptical of his boorish, abrasive, and morose manner but goes along for the ride despite all of her misgivings. The problem is, during shooting in Souh Africa, Bobby gets kidnapped by terrorists, and the studio forces the production to shut down, putting Charlie and Deidra out of jobs. That is, until they remember a discretionary fund tied to the Czech Republic that they can tap into without studio authorization, and they decide to film the movie originally written. And, naturally, all of this Hollywood political tension gives rise to romantic tension between the two leads.
The Deal turns out to be yet another average entry in the romantic comedy genre, as I've said. Maybe it's the fact that Meg Ryan is in the picture, but The Deal took few risks and failed to tweak what is the standard screwball formula: two people, oil and water, come together under absurd circumstances. And while few romantic comedies take risks, they can still be redeeming if the romantic dynamic between the two leads is convincing, appealing, or makes the heart pitter-patter, as it were. Macy and Ryan did not really have all that much chemistry. I never believed them as a couple, and I was even less convinced when their outlandish situation allowed them to dismantle their respective emotional walls and give into one another. More than once, I thought, as contrived as it would have been, that Felicity Huffman, Macy's wife in real life, would have been a much better Deidra all told because the two have natural chemistry, and she would play a much more convincing ambitious studio executive than Ryan. Ryan infused her character with the same sort of wishy washy qualities that all of her romantic leads seem to possess. Again, maybe that would have seemed too clever, or maybe Felicity was just too busy with Desperate Housewives.
The other problem with this film is that it was simultaneously a love letter to and satire of Hollywood and the way it works, which I think would be highly amusing to Hollywood insiders. As for me, I never really laughed. Sure, the idea for the film Charlie wants to make is really, well, dumb, and rife with opportunity for jokes, and many outlandish things happen, but they are all conventions used and seen before. And while I think the revisits are designed to bolster the satire, I just found myself yawning.
It could have been the subject matter--I mean, I'm familiar with Hollywood politics even if I'm not an insider--but it didn't help that some of the comedic timing and pacing was just not well directed or executed. There were jokes and scenes that could have been much funnier if delivered differently or filmed differently. For example, there's a scene where a drunk Deidra apparently decides Charlie's ok enough at that point to have sex with in the shower, but then Bobby Mason's manager barges in on them. First of all, it didn't make sense that Deidra would suddenly change her mind (drunk or not) and enjoy this casual romp in the shower, since she'd spent the first half of the movie calling Charlie "disgusting," without the usual hidden smile when he wasn't looking, but then, that set-up, which has been used before in all sorts of situations, including television shows, happened in a very pedestrian way. It felt recycled and simply unfunny. Their reactions were predictably underwhelming and any potential for laughter lost steam quickly and died.
The idea for the film was potentially a good one. Who wouldn't want to make fun of Hollywood? And Macy playing a crass producer with a cynical approach to his life and chosen profession was unusual enough to be a worthy viewing experiment, but in the end, the film simply didn't work for me, and Ryan's and Macy's lack of chemistry left me almost never rooting for Charlie and Deidra as a couple (and the way the story was told didn't convince me either).
The best part of the film for me was Elliott Gould's appearance. His appearance in a film always makes it about ten percent better. He played a rabbi and an "expert" consultant to stars like Bono and Bill Clinton, who serves as Bobby's spiritual counselor during filming, and Bobby's urban Jew routine coupled with Charlie's penchant for ascerbic sarcasm served well as the impetus for some of Elliott's talented comedic reactions. Plus, it was a fitting casting choice.
All in all, though, The Deal deserves a 5 on the ratings scale for being utterly mediocre because it was. It was a comedy, and yet, I never laughed. I think the idea was pulled off, in that the purpose of it is clear, but I didn't think the film was all that cute because the romance was so unconvincing and unappealing - and if that was the point, then this movie should not have been billed as a romantic comedy but something else entirely. I don't think it was the point, though; I think The Deal was meant to be a screwball-like satire that just fizzled and faded by its conclusion. And as much as I like William H. Macy, I don't think this particular stab at screenwriting was successful. In other words, I don't feel like I was given much of a deal in the end.