Say What You Need To Say
A while ago, I already drew your attention to “Gray matters”, a romantic comedy about “a sister, a brother and the girl of their dreams”. Now that I’ve finally seen it, of course I can’t keep myself from commenting on the matters at hand (sorry for bad pun!) – SPOILERS!
I will survive… this movie?
Starring Heather Graham, Tom Cavanaugh and Bridget Moynahan as the leads, “Gray matters” tells the story of brother and sister Sam and Gray, who are so close everyone thinks they are a couple. They share the love for old movies, dancing like Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, a big loft in New York City – and the taste in women. Both Sam and Gray fall head over heels for Charlie (what’s with the gender neutral names?) but even though Gray does the chatting up, Sam is the one who is getting married to her.
However not before Charlie and Gray share a drunken kiss on the night before the wedding, which throws Gray into confusion and Charlie into blissful oblivion – she doesn’t remember anything about it. So Gray is all alone trying to figure out if this means she is straight, gay or just jealous, as her unhelpful therapist Dr. Sydney (Sissy Spacek) suggests. It takes a taxi driver from Scotland in drag, a video conference call and a British lesbian to unravel this brain traumadrama.
“Gray matters” is based on the real-life sister of director and writer Sue Kramer, and just as true life, it is a bumpy road. Unfortunately, that is not really a joy to watch – there are some really awful or just pointless bits, and then there are some really good ones. The best scene in my opinion is the following: Gray has just unwittingly come out to the whole office and flees to the lift in panic. Her brother Sam follows her and Gray talks about her fears of being all alone. Superb acting make this the most heartfelt moment of the movie.
If the rest was this good, it would get a 5 star rating without a second’s hesitation. As I said before though, “Gray matters” cannot keep up the level of neither script nor acting. Heather Graham spends an awful lot of time freaking out, and why Sam is so charming Charlie would fall for him right away is beyond me – Tom Cavanaugh tries but where there is no chemistry, it’s impossible to create one.
Usually fabulous actors like Sissy Spacek, Alan Cumming and Rachel Shelley are almost wasted in their supporting roles: Spacek’s therapist is a mere caricature, Cumming as the Scottish taxi driver with a heart of gold ends up as the worst drag queen ever, and the posh client played by The L Word’s Shelley simply doesn’t get enough screen time to make an impact (and in the minutes she is on screen has to suffer oogling of her cleavage).
The plot idea in itself is intriguing but instead of exploring the possibilites, Kramer opts for the easy solution and makes everything clean and pretty: the whole situation is resolved by Gray having sex with another woman, which makes us question why we watched the previous 95 minutes if her problem was that “serious”. Also, Gray’s freaking out over the kiss was not only unfunny but downright insulting: she actually spits (!) out after kissing Charlie, the bride-to-be. I cannot say how offended I was – that is just revolting. Her following pacing all night was meant to be funny when in fact it was just boring: why make such a fuss over a kiss? As Gray demonstrates later on when she is kissed by Gordy, the taxi driver, she knows very well that a kiss is just a kiss, so the whole premise feels unnecessarily hyped.
All in all, “Gray matters” promises a lot more than it can deliver – Heather Graham’s character is just too much: too clueless, too panicky, too suddenly okay with being gay. Kramer’s script may be based on her sister’s experience but is obviously written from a straight perspective. The movie is a flawed piece of fluff with very few laught out loud scenes – shame, it could have been so much better.
3 out of 6 Meeps – average
