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Citizen Ruth

1996, Movie, R, 126 mins

CITIZEN RUTH
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A jaundiced, blackly-comic look a la Preston Sturges at the abortion debate through the bleary eyes of Ruth Stoops (Laura Dern), a scrawny, ignorant, white-trash huffer who finds herself at the middle of a media whirlwind. Dern turns in a no-holds-barred performance as the pathetic Ruth, who doesn't want to be a mother, doesn't want to go to jail, doesn't want to be saved and certainly doesn't want to be a symbol -- all she really wants is a paper bag, a tube of airplane glue and a nice alley where she can have a party in her mind. Writer-director Alexander Payne's audacious debut takes what could be the stuff of which earnest problem movies are made and opts for satire; the result is studded with brilliant moments and an eccentric cast that runs the gamut from Swoosie Kurtz as a lesbian, pro-choice guerrilla, to Tippi Hedren and Burt Reynolds, playing, respectively, a mediagenic women's-rights activist and a smarmy televangelist. But Payne seems to have bought into the Spike Lee school of social commentary, predicated on the notion that you don't need an opinion if you stage an onscreen "debate." You need only look at Sturges' THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK or HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO -- or, for that matter, Stanley Kubrick's DR. STRANGELOVE -- to see what a difference conviction makes. leave a comment
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