Last of the Monster Kids

Last of the Monster Kids
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Monday, May 23, 2022

Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (1996)



None of Michael Lehmann's movies had ever made much money. “Heathers” quickly became a beloved cult classic but flopped in 1986. Nobody saw “Meet the Applegates,” “Hudson Hawk” was a notorious failure, and “Airheads” came and went without much notice at all. Yet Lehmann was able to continue working, by shifting his focus to television. Between 1994 and 1997, he would direct five episodes of beloved comedy series, “The Larry Sanders Show.” That obviously showed that Lehmann could still get something made on time and under budget. This was presumably a factor in him getting hired to direct “The Truth About Cats & Dogs,” an entry into that most light-weight and predictable of genres: The nineties romantic-comedy.

Abby is the host of a radio advice show geared towards pet owners. Every day, she fields advice from people with sick or misbehaving pets. One day, she receives a call from Brian, a dreamy-sounding photographer who is having trouble with a dog he's photographing. The two immediately hit it off. Abby, however, lacks confidence in her appearance. In a moment of insecurity, the short, mousy woman describes herself as looking like a tall, leggy, blonde model. Coincidentally, that model – a woman named Noelle – happens to live in Abby's apartment. The two become friends and she talks Noelle into posing as her in-person, while Abby continues to romance Brian over the phone. As feelings grow more complicated, the question arises over how long the two women can keep up the deception.

Within a few minutes of watching “The Truth About Cats & Dogs,” you figure out what the movie is doing. This is a gender-flipped “Cyrano de Bergerac,” updated for the nineties. Many of the classic story's themes, such as the fear of presenting yourself honestly to someone you love, are timeless. Yet the screenplay, from late writer Audrey Wells, is also clearly about issues that were facing women at the time. As a woman, Abby feels how physical appearance is valued over anything else, much more than personally. One assumes that Wells' script was inspired by the pressures put on women to align their personal value with their beauty. This is a pretty important topic to discuss and one that easily could've made “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” an insightful and cutting motion picture.

Instead, “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” is a nineties rom-com, a style notorious for relying upon formula and cliches. The film uncritically follows many of the hallmarks of the genre. Naturally, Noelle begins to develop feelings for Brian too. This leads to a wedge being driven between the two women, the dramatic events that shakes the story up in the last third. Simple misunderstandings that easily could've been talked out are instead allowed to escalate into big arguments. Despite that, everything works out for a syrupy, happy ending. “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” even includes a wise best friend character for Brian, played by future superstar Jamie Foxx in a role absolutely anyone could've done. At least he's not a sassy gay man. (Though the Cool Black Friend feels like as much of a cliché on its own.)

The most ridiculous contrivances of “The Truth About Cats & Dogs” is irrevocably baked into its premise. Brian has to be a pretty enormous idiot not to immediately figure out what is going on here. Noelle sounds nothing like Abby. She clearly has a totally different personality from Abby. The type of conversations she has with Brian are completely unlike his talks with Abby. Meanwhile, he never notices that “Donna,” “Abby's” friend, happens to sound and act exactly like the woman he talks on the phone for hours with. It's a hard pill to swallow. Also difficult to swallow is the idea that nobody would be attracted to Janeane Garofalo. Maybe she's not a supermodel – and I understand that it's more Abby's hang-ups holding her back than her appearance – but she's hardly a Cyrano either. Garofalo is lovely all throughout the film and suggesting otherwise is honestly insulting.

But maybe complaining about the cliches and contrivances of the rom-com genre is besides the point. I love eighties slasher movies and action films, finding the reoccurring tropes and stereotypes in those movies to be charming and fun. For fans of this type of thing, maybe "The Truth About Cats & Dogs'" commitment to formula is a feature, not a bug. Yet I still think this movie fails on its own standards in some big ways. If this was meant to be a vehicle for Janeane Garofalo, it definitely lets her down. Garofalo got famous for her sarcastic stand-up. The character of Abby allows her few chances to flex this muscle. Only the scenes where she talking to increasingly ridiculous callers, or a brief moment where she has to improvise a personality for "Donna" in seconds, show Garofalo's gift for snark.

Abby is obviously the film's protagonist but Uma Thurman as Noelle gets top billing. Because Hollywood marketing pays more attention to leggy blondes than short brunettes too, I guess. Noelle is one of many roles where Thurman, a versatile and intense actress, is underserved by the material. Noelle is flighty, shallow, and impulsive. She repeatedly points out she never eats anything. She dates a jerk, despite everyone around her pointing out he's a jerk. She gets caught up in the act and starts making out with Brian. While the film seems to be making some sort of point about how society's expectations twist women up, Noelle is never given any real depth. Thurman plays a goofy, ditzy blonde and is rarely given a chance to expand beyond that archetype. Only the scenes where she interacts with Garofalo generate much interest. 

Brian, the third corner of the story's triangle, is played by Ben Chaplin. The minute Chaplin appeared on-screen, my brain just kept thinking "Who the hell is this guy?" Chaplin is a blandly handsome leading man, distinguished more by his British accent than anything else. Chaplin presumably got cast because of his prior appearance in "The Remains of the Day" and would go on to a largely forgettable character actor's career. He's fine here, I guess. Again, it's hard to get over how gullible the character must be to accept this fabrication, making it hard for the viewer to get invested in Chaplin's performance. If the guy is so blinded by Noelle's beauty, that he barely even notices Abby, you wonder why she's attracted to him in the first place. I suppose Chaplin and Garofalo do share some okay chemistry during their phone conversation scenes but that's about the only thing that's memorable about him. 

The best romantic comedies build their humor out of the interactions between the characters. "The Truth About Cats & Dogs," on the other hand, goes for increasingly broad slapstick to try and inject some humor into the proceedings. This is really evident in two scenes. When Abby and Noelle are getting lunch together, a random guy attempts to impress the blonde with a random act of fly snatching, a sequence that feels totally out-of-place and adds nothing to the film. Similarly, the scene where Noelle plans on revealing the truth to Brian escalates to a silly scene of him driving her to the radio station, the knob on his car radio getting yanked off as Noelle crawls around the vehicle. These moments stick out badly and feel like desperate attempts to generate some laughs. 

Like all nineties romantic comedies, "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" is visually indistinct. There's little about its use of color, camera movement, lighting, or framing that's memorable or interesting. It mostly just looks like a TV show. You see little of the trademarks that distinguished Michael Lehmann's earlier movies. The exaggerated set design or surreal dialogue of "Heathers" or "Hudson Hawk" are not present. Really, the only element of "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" that sticks out to be are its montage sequences, which feel distinctly nineties in a way I can't quite describe. A scene where Abby and Brian have phone sex has the kind of soft focus and slow dissolves that just define the decade of my youth for me.

One thing about "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" did surprise me though. While watching the opening credits, I did not expect to see Howard Shore's name pop up. You did not expect the guy best known for composing sweeping scores for "The Lord of the Rings" or intense music for the films of David Cronenberg to work on an ephemeral rom-com like this. I guess not every gig can be "The Silence of the Lambs." Shore provides a light jazz score that is not especially memorable, though occasionally gives the movie a fitting peppy energy. Shore's music is frequently subbed out for a series of pop songs from Adult Contemporary hitmakers like Sting, Blues Traveller, or Suzanne Vega. This was from the days when even mid-tier studio products had soundtracks filled with notable names. The needle drops are pretty intrusive, though I did like the random Ben Folds Five song that pops up. 

After "The Truth About Cats & Dogs" wrapped up, I found myself wondering something: What was the truth about cats and dogs supposed to be? Brian adopts a big slobbery dog early in the film, while Abby has a fluffy cat she cuddles in a few scenes. It's easy to compare Brian, so stunned by a pretty lady that it takes the whole movie for him to figure out the obvious truth, to the absent-minded goofiness of a friendly dog. Yet if we are meant to presume anything about Abby from her being a cat person, I didn't catch it. Lots of people have observed that men are more like dogs while women are more like cats but the film doesn't really offer any insight on that. The title, which is also the name of Abby's radio program, seems to have been chosen because it was catchy and not because it reflects anything about the film. Maybe that's a petty complaint but, if your title is professing to reveal some truth about our animal friends, the actual contents of the film should probably attempt to do that. 

"The Truth About Cats & Dogs" does mark an important turning point in Michael Lehmann's career: It was the first one of his movies to actually be a box office success. The film would gross 34 million in North America and a little more than that overseas. I can't find what the movie's budget was but I'm betting it was a lot less than that. The reviews were fairly positive too, though there was at least one notable detractor. Janeane Garfalo herself would dismiss the film years later, saying the original script had a lot more nuance and that the final product was a bland studio product. Which I would agree with. The film would successfully launch the career of screenwriter Wells, a former radio DJ herself who would go on to write similarly light-hearted comedies like "George of the Jungle" and "The Kid," and direct two movies of her own, before passing away unexpectedly in 2018. As for Lehmann, he'd get to make a few more movies, so I guess that's good. [Grade: C-]

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