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Fare Games

1999, Movie, R, 90 mins

Fare Games: Review

FARE GAMES
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As anyone who has ever been trapped in a New York City cab with a chatty driver can tell you, few people have more interesting on-the-job tales to tell. So how come the best Brian O'Hara — writer-director of this sleazy romantic comedy — could come up with for his cabbie heroes is mundane whining about their sex lives? Middle-aged, married Jimmy (Eddie Estafan) is carrying on a cheap affair with Jennifer (Marina Morgan), an NYU nymphet young enough to be his daughter. And Martin (Russel Stewart), Jimmy's best friend, has fallen for a regular fare named Susie (Elizabeth Curtain), who dances for dollars at a dingy Times Square dive called Puss 'n' Boots. Martin is far more cautious about affairs of the heart — his was broken three years earlier when his wife decamped with their daughter — and warns Jimmy that wild, pool-side sex isn't worth destroying one's marriage. But Jimmy isn't thinking with his head: His wife begins to get wise, and he learns a hard lesson the hard way. What makes the film so unpleasant isn't even the bad acting, awful dialogue (Jennifer to Jimmy: "You've got a hairy chest." Jimmy to Jennifer: "Better me than you.") or the fact that it isn't remotely funny. It's O'Hara's astounding lack of taste. From the lingering shot of Jennifer massaging Jimmy's crotch through his pants and Martin's leering at Susie as she dances topless in an empty bar (how romantic!) to O'Hara's racist treatment of his only black characters, it's all appalling and depressing. And for a film that spends so much of its running time tooling around Manhattan in the passenger seat of a cab, it captures none of the flavor of the Big Apple: It may as well have been shot in Secaucus. leave a comment --Ken Fox
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