Made-Up
On the heels of the opening of "Big Bad Love", here is another successful directorial debut by an actor working with his spouse behind and in front of the camera. Indeed, "Made-Up" is a bittersweet comedic frolic for a talented foursome: director and supporting player Tony Shalhoub; lead actresses, producers and real-life sisters Brooke and Lynne Adams; and the up-and-coming Eva Amurri. Seeking distribution, it has the right stuff to play in limited release and move on to wider exposure in post-theatrical sessions.
Winner of a top award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where it world-premiered Friday, "Made-Up" is one of the first shot-on-digital-video comedies primarily aimed at women that also falls into the "mockumentary" genre. While the presence of a three-guy crew both capturing every image in the film and becoming players in the unfolding story leads to several amusing sequences, the conceit is not meant to trick the audience but serves as a smart way to tell this particular tale.
Starting a little awkwardly as we're introduced to the main players, "Made-Up" is constructed from the footage of a filmmaking project by Kate (Lynne Adams). Her divorced sister Elizabeth (Brooke Adams) is the primary subject as budding beautician Sara (Amurri), Elizabeth's daughter, successfully makes over her mom. Lynne Adams wrote the screenplay, based on her one-character play "Two Faced".
There is lots of banter about the lengths women go to make themselves attractive to themselves and the opposite sex. Sara is serious in her artistic and philosophical quest to make Elizabeth look thin and youthful, while her victim is at first amused. When she's blown away by the change a wig and tape-on face-lift brings and successfully catches the eye of Max (Shalhoub) -- a restaurant owner and neophyte actor who's related to one of the film crew -- Elizabeth's attitude adjusts.
Contributing to Elizabeth's desire to make her daughter proud is the unavoidable presence of her ex-husband's much-younger new wife, Molly (Light Eternity). The girlish alliance between Sara and Molly, as well as the latter's alluring good looks, are salt in old wounds, but Elizabeth is in for another shock when she's deemed an unworthy leading subject in Kate's suddenly sought-after work-in-progress.
The movie tips into slapstick and outright silliness several times and strains a bit to include the Hollywoodizing of Kate's project, which has offscreen characters determining what happens to Elizabeth and for a while showing more interest in the flirtatious action going on between Sara and Chris (Kalen Conover), a soundman on the shoot.
Eventually, the conundrums of "filming reality" -- when to leave the camera on and when to turn it off; whether to influence people's behavior and orchestrate events or not -- brings the sisters to the brink of serious difficulties. With "Made-Up", the sisters Adams and Shalhoub (who is married to Brooke) have taken a playfully irreverent approach to middle-age rites of passage that comes with many opportunities for the performers to self-consciously "act."
Making an exciting, quite promising step up from smaller roles, 16-year-old Amurri (daughter of Susan Sarandon) has charisma and good looks to spare. Appearing in only a few scenes, Gary Sinise is coolly in tune with his character of Elizabeth's ex-husband. Jim Issa and Lance Krall, who with Conover emerged from an Atlanta comedy improv group, make solid contributions as the other two members of the film crew, while newcomer Eternity (her real name, by the way) is memorable as the reluctant "home wrecker."
MADE-UP
Sister Films
Credits:
Director: Tony Shalhoub
Screenwriter: Lynne Adams
Producers: Lynne Adams, Brooke Adams, Mark Donadio
Executive producers: George Fifield, Bob Weiner, Lois Weiner
Director of photography: Gary Henoch
Production designer: Miriam Feldman
Editor: Michael Matzdorff
Costume designer: Lisa Lesniak
Music: Michael Wolff
Cast:
Elizabeth Tivey: Brooke Adams
Sara Tivey: Eva Amurri
Kate James: Lynne Adams
Max: Tony Shalhoub
Molly Avrums: Light Eternity
Duncan: Gary Sinise
Chris: Kalen Conover
No MPAA rating
Color/stereo
Running time -- 96 minutes...
Winner of a top award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, where it world-premiered Friday, "Made-Up" is one of the first shot-on-digital-video comedies primarily aimed at women that also falls into the "mockumentary" genre. While the presence of a three-guy crew both capturing every image in the film and becoming players in the unfolding story leads to several amusing sequences, the conceit is not meant to trick the audience but serves as a smart way to tell this particular tale.
Starting a little awkwardly as we're introduced to the main players, "Made-Up" is constructed from the footage of a filmmaking project by Kate (Lynne Adams). Her divorced sister Elizabeth (Brooke Adams) is the primary subject as budding beautician Sara (Amurri), Elizabeth's daughter, successfully makes over her mom. Lynne Adams wrote the screenplay, based on her one-character play "Two Faced".
There is lots of banter about the lengths women go to make themselves attractive to themselves and the opposite sex. Sara is serious in her artistic and philosophical quest to make Elizabeth look thin and youthful, while her victim is at first amused. When she's blown away by the change a wig and tape-on face-lift brings and successfully catches the eye of Max (Shalhoub) -- a restaurant owner and neophyte actor who's related to one of the film crew -- Elizabeth's attitude adjusts.
Contributing to Elizabeth's desire to make her daughter proud is the unavoidable presence of her ex-husband's much-younger new wife, Molly (Light Eternity). The girlish alliance between Sara and Molly, as well as the latter's alluring good looks, are salt in old wounds, but Elizabeth is in for another shock when she's deemed an unworthy leading subject in Kate's suddenly sought-after work-in-progress.
The movie tips into slapstick and outright silliness several times and strains a bit to include the Hollywoodizing of Kate's project, which has offscreen characters determining what happens to Elizabeth and for a while showing more interest in the flirtatious action going on between Sara and Chris (Kalen Conover), a soundman on the shoot.
Eventually, the conundrums of "filming reality" -- when to leave the camera on and when to turn it off; whether to influence people's behavior and orchestrate events or not -- brings the sisters to the brink of serious difficulties. With "Made-Up", the sisters Adams and Shalhoub (who is married to Brooke) have taken a playfully irreverent approach to middle-age rites of passage that comes with many opportunities for the performers to self-consciously "act."
Making an exciting, quite promising step up from smaller roles, 16-year-old Amurri (daughter of Susan Sarandon) has charisma and good looks to spare. Appearing in only a few scenes, Gary Sinise is coolly in tune with his character of Elizabeth's ex-husband. Jim Issa and Lance Krall, who with Conover emerged from an Atlanta comedy improv group, make solid contributions as the other two members of the film crew, while newcomer Eternity (her real name, by the way) is memorable as the reluctant "home wrecker."
MADE-UP
Sister Films
Credits:
Director: Tony Shalhoub
Screenwriter: Lynne Adams
Producers: Lynne Adams, Brooke Adams, Mark Donadio
Executive producers: George Fifield, Bob Weiner, Lois Weiner
Director of photography: Gary Henoch
Production designer: Miriam Feldman
Editor: Michael Matzdorff
Costume designer: Lisa Lesniak
Music: Michael Wolff
Cast:
Elizabeth Tivey: Brooke Adams
Sara Tivey: Eva Amurri
Kate James: Lynne Adams
Max: Tony Shalhoub
Molly Avrums: Light Eternity
Duncan: Gary Sinise
Chris: Kalen Conover
No MPAA rating
Color/stereo
Running time -- 96 minutes...
- 3/5/2002
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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