“Multiple Sarcasms” has the makings of a decent American novel, with its classic unsettled hero, standard-issue Manhattan setting and hints of literary ambition.
In a novel, the various yearnings and dissatisfactions of the protagonist can be explored through the author’s descriptive powers or through the character’s first-person narration. However, “Multiple Sarcasms” (nice title, by the way) is a movie, and as a movie, it hasn’t come up with anything special to shed light on this guy’s mid-life course change.
And so we’re left with Gabriel, played by Timothy Hutton, a New York architect who can’t concentrate on his work. It’s 1979, and Gabriel is married to Annie, who is smart and unimpeachably pleasant and maybe just a bit dull around the edges — in short, a role for Dana Delany.
Gabriel wants to write a play, not be an architect. And so he mopes around until he finally gets down to breaking with his old life and embarking on something new.
Counseling him along the way is his best friend Cari (Mira Sorvino). These two have a habit of sitting around city parks in the middle of the day, drinking booze from a bottle wrapped in a paper bag — a habit that might suggest why Hutton looks so dissolute and disheveled throughout.
You may have noticed that Gabriel’s best friend is a woman played by an attractive actress. You may also suspect that this will be one of those movies in which two longtime opposite-sex friends eventually come ‘round to realizing that they might be meant for more than Best Friends Forever status.
Gabriel also gets advice from his flamboyantly gay colleague (Mario Van Peebles), who looks like he got left out of some sort of Village People audition. However, Van Peebles gives an amusing performance, so it’s worth it.
There are some funny one-liners in first-time director Brooks Branch’s film, to be sure. But what it lacks is a way inside Gabriel’s dilemma, both in what we learn about the character and in the gravity-free performance by Hutton.
Even the outcome of Gabriel’s play-writing adventure seems too easy. A story of a person who throws over his life to chase a dream, and then fails at it, would definitely be a risky scenario — but it would probably have more weight than the movie on display here.
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