GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS Rating: (out of 5 stars) Director: Richard Day Producers: Michael Warwick, Richard Ahren Writer: Richard Day Director of Photography: Nicholas Hutak Cast: Jack Plotnick, Clinton Leupp, Jeffery Roberson Visit the IMDB page for full cast and crew

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Review by: Warren Curry
10/7/03

Girls Will Be Girls is a film with a gimmick. It's a comedy about three actresses who share a house in Beverly Hills -- the hook is that the three wannabe leading ladies are all played by men. Actually, the filmmakers behind the movie decided to up the ante even further and cast every female role (including extras) with men. Girls Will Be Girls sports a chaotic, unhinged sense of humor, and it doesn't exclusively rely on its gimmick to be the sole source of entertainment. Sure, it feels more than a little bit like a novelty piece, but the film's offbeat spirit is likeable enough to make up for the small handful of comic misfires.

Evie (Jack Plotnick) is an aging, has-been actress whose biggest professional achievement was starring in a sci-fi B-movie entitled "Asteroid." She's now nothing more than a functioning alcoholic who clings desperately to the hope that she will have a career revival. Coco (Clinton Leupp) is her roommate, a woman who's equally haunted and inspired by the memory of the doctor who performed her many abortions several years earlier. Coco absorbs Evie's verbal abuse constantly until a third roommate enters the picture -- the charmingly naïve and full-figured Varla (Jeffrey Roberson), an aspiring actress who loves to eat and masks very dark personal reasons for wanting to share a house with the two other women.

Films like Girls Will Be Girls often exude the feeling of being a feature-length inside joke, and thankfully that's not the case here. Writer/Director Richard Day creates a fun mood and manages to elicit a few laughs through broad physical humor and sight gags. However, there are some one-liners that fall considerably flat, and one-liners that don't work always manage to stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. But the film couldn't take itself any less seriously (plenty of harmlessly distasteful moments), which makes the comic shortcomings much more palatable. The film rarely reaches the heights of comedy gold -- although the scene where Coco's doctor (Eric Stonestreet) delivers arguably the most unromantic marriage proposal in the annals of cinema certainly does -- but it is funny enough.

The performances are all engaging -- and Jeffery Roberson is fairly convincing as a woman -- and the characters well defined and distinct, with the Beverly Hills home serving as a holding cell for these terribly mismatched roommates. The movie teeters on the edge of absurdity, often treading gleefully into that territory, but it doesn't lose focus. Day's script is able to laugh at itself yet doesn't grow tired because there is actually a discernible story to be found -- while this is hardly a plot driven movie, the campy story beats do synthesize nicely with the film's sense of humor.

Girls Will Be Girls will most likely be best remembered for its one very distinguishing trait, which is quite understandable, but there's some solid comic talent in play that shouldn't be overshadowed.

(An IFC Films release. Opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 10, 2003.)