With its moribund direction and histrionic performances, DON'T HANG UP is an endurance test even for bad-movie buffs, an over extended one-act play that aspires to be a A BRIEF ENCOUNTER for invalids.
Pudgy British playwright Joe Green (David Suchet) feeds his face instead of his talent as he hides inside his flat and nurses agoraphobia and writer's block. Green moans transatlantically to Sarah Wise (Rosanna Arquette), an American actress with an unpronounceable medical disorder. Although
wheelchair-bound (she can occasionally manage a few steps on crutches), Sarah begs the minor playwright to sanction an off-Broadway production of one of his plays as a showcase that will end her seven years of forced retirement. Through their conversations, a friendship develops and a potential
odd-couple romance blossoms. He can prattle on endlessly about his psychological ailments and their root causes; she can regale her phone-mate with war stories about her physical setbacks.
In this match made in heaven's hospital wing, things go well until the prospect of meeting is broached. She fears being smothered with pitying kindness; he's afraid of intimacy that can be betrayed by desertion. When Sarah visits England to help with Joe's latest masterwork, Joe treats her
shabbily and sends her packing. Sarah understands that Joe was traumatized when his parents sent him to live in America for several years as a child, and she forgives him. The confessional chatter continues on both ends and, after Joe slims down and rejoins the human race, he realizes he can no
longer thrive without Sarah. He sends for her again, and this time she agrees to return only if Joe ventures out of his apartment and picks her up at the airport. All indications point to a healthier future for the English crybaby and his walking wounded inamorata.
Despite the cabin-fever closeness of its two protagonists, DON'T HANG UP shuts its audience out. Viewers want to look away when Suchet gets out his bag of actor's tricks, all designed to showcase his versatility. Arquette, by contrast, works primarily with her voice, which reaches pitches only
dogs can hear. Maddeningly, the film expects you to be bowled over by its dialectical structure. He has a sickness in his soul that manifests itself physically, whereas she has a weakness in her legs that gives her emotional strength. The viewer is trapped in this touchy-feelie nonsense, which
seems less like a work of theater--let alone film--than an act of therapeutic venting. Compounding this suffocating assault on audience sensibilities are two misguided performers seizing on flashy roles that have no center. Suchet is talented, but his glib posturing does nothing to lighten up the
writer's incessant complaining about his childhood abandonment. Arquette, meanwhile, has gone steadily downhill since her promising debut in THE EXECUTIONER'S SONG, and is now one of the shrillest actresses working in movies. And as if it weren't enough that we have to be tortured by writer Tom
Kempinski's Wagnerian Ring of self-pity, the actors make it worse by crinkling their noses and twinkling adorably at us. Their tedious kvetching is many things, but cute isn't one of them. (Extreme profanity.) leave a comment
