"On the road to the perfect life, Sam & Alex took a little detour."

Laurel Canyon (2002): 8/10

Poster (c) Sony Pictures Classic
Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. This credo from decades past still holds for Jane (Frances McDormand). She’s a closing-in-on-50 record producer for a band that includes Fripp (Lou Barlow), Rowan (Russell Pollard), and, the one that Jane is romantically involved with the most, Ian (Alessandro Nivola). Her son Sam (Christian Bale) is a newly graduated psychiatrist and his fiancé Alex (Kate Beckinsale), who is also a doctor move in with Jane in Laurel Canyon. She does many drugs and Sam and Alex have to try to deal with her.

There’s basically one reason to see this movie: Frances McDormand. She’s a versatile actress, and here she’s both funny and disturbing. She puts in a powerful, grade-A acting job. Also, Bale and Beckinsale put in great acting jobs as well. This isn’t as much a movie as much as an acting showcase. The movie per se is good, too, but it’s really the acting that makes you love it.

It’s a drama, but it has many funny moments. I’m not going to name them, but there were a good number of them. Something that made this story believable is the music. There’s no tense music in real life, so it’s only there when it’s necessary. It did the movie good. Also, the cinematography was great. It made me believe that I was in Hollywood again.

This is Lisa Cholodenko’s second film she wrote and directed (after 1998’s High Art). The script was great; it was touching, poignant, and funny. The directing was really good; it looked like it was all in one shot, which is also kudos to the cinematography. In all art-house movies like this, all of the movies look the same, and this is no different. It really is an art-house movie, and not everyone will love it. But I’m not “not everyone”.

Rated R for sexuality, language, and drug use.

Review Date: April 26, 2003