He’s taffin’ again.
The missing link in the Taffin to 007 evolution.
You can see the story beats coming from a mile away, but Sara Montpetit has an interesting face and the tone is far less twee than I feared. More like a warm bath.
I understand that some people will be turned off by the meandering plot, shaky camera and "mumbly" characters. It's not for everyone.
For me, though, this is the kind of warm, inventive American indie that's often overlooked because it doesn't attempt to make a grand statement. Instead, in its own quiet way, it evokes a lot of feeling: the crisp cold of early winter, the chatter of street people who populate every major city and the awkward conversation that ensues…
I had trouble with this one. It features a few nice performances, especially Michael Rapaport as an amateur boxer/onion farmer, but it's also an early example of how Allen's writing began to atrophy throughout the '90s, as he relied more and more on obnoxious, sometimes offensive caricature, particularly when trying to draw class distinctions.