7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A seriously funny little movie, February 6, 2003
This is one of the funniest art-movies I have ever seen. It didn't get wide distribution and it wasn't well promoted. I would call it a sleeper. I went to see it at a theatre which specialized in screening arthouse and foreign movies.
Jeff Goldblum can either be sympathetic or very irritating as an actor, and in this film he shines. He portrays a man down in the dumps after losing his girlfriend through a comedy of errors, and is picked up by an artist looking for a likeness of Christ. Goldblum becomes very successful at modelling for paintings of Christ, so much so that he develops a Christ-fixation, believing he is the reincarnation of Jesus.
Natasha Richardson plays his old girlfriend, who meanwhile has got a job doing voice-overs for Italian porn flicks. There she meets Bob Hoskins as the male voice-over. He is trying to get out of the rut he is in looking after his weird mother, who has this bizzare habit of mincing swordfish.
Hoskins and Goldbum meet by chance, unaware that the other is pursuing Natasha Richardson. The ending doesn't leave things nicely resolved, but it is funny.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very original plot - Very Funny Movie, September 25, 2003
So much of this film has this almost somber air to it but the things that are happening are so funny ... Louie works for a religious articles curator making photographic art of great Christian figures like St. Francis and John the Baptist. He finds someone who resembles our perception of what those figures should have looked like, puts them in costume with appropriate props, and takes their picture. Voila! Only problem is he hasn't been able to find a suitable Jesus and he is close to losing his job unless he can find a model for Christ.
His friend, Zalman, who is going to sit for one of Louie's pictures is a voice over man and has just landed a voice over contract with a new studio. But he's sick and can't make it to the voiceover. He doesn't want to make a bad impression and never get called back so he convinces Louie to go in his place and pretend to be him. That is how Louie meets Sybil and spends the afternoon with her. Did I mention that the voice over was for a porno flick?
Sybil has problems. First of all, her sick grandfather needs medication she can't afford. Then she tells how she had fallen in love with a pianist at a resataurant in which she worked and, through a series of comical errors, he was imprisoned over his passion for her. He was getting out the next day and she would like to have a new dress to meet him in. Louie, smitten, gives her the money for both only to return later to find the dress returned.
Thinking he has been ripped off when he was so hopeful of a romance with Sybil and threatened again to find a suitable Jesus or lose his job, Louie is thrilled when a downtrodden Jeff Goldblum appears outside the window hungry, tired and wet from rain. The resemblance is wonderful and Goldblum becomes an overnight sensation with his pictures on buses and keychains and the whole works.
These three paths crisscross and intersect in the most ingenious ways as Sybil tries to find Louie (thinking his name is Zalman), Louie tries to find Sybil and Goldblum becomes convinced that he IS Jesus but is torn between his new found identity and his desire for revenge on the woman who sent him to prison.
While there is nothing patently offensive, there are adult situations.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very funny, likeable film, April 24, 2007
Not sure why this gets such a low rating on IMDB. After seeing this on TV I liked it so much I bought the VHS. The movie is somewhat bizarre, but in a good way. I wish it were available on DVD.
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