Solid cast can’t cover up ‘Party’s‘ lame plot

Max Jacobson

Friday, July 13, 2001 | 10:04 a.m.

Max Jacobson covers the food industry and writes movie reviews for the Sun. Reach him at max@vegas.com or 990-2454.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to get a bunch of your friends together to participate in a film project that you were writing and directing, provided you could get your project funded, of course? That's exactly what Alan Cumming and his collaborator Jennifer Jason Leigh have done, in their new film "The Anniversary Party."

This film will appeal to those who have a touch of the voyeur in them, or to anyone who is fascinated by rich, spoiled, dissolute, self-involved, sexually ambivalent people. But if you do not count yourself in that company, it's unlikely you'll develop any real empathy for these characters. You may still enjoy the movie, though, which is a stagey ensemble piece reminiscent of auteur filmmakers from Henry Jaglom to Ingmar Bergman.

The story centers around the mercurial marriage of an author named Joe Therrian (Cumming) and his actress-wife Sally Nash (Leigh.) The setting is their trendy, artfully decorated Los Angeles home, which is located in a canyon filled with barking dogs.

That fact becomes the backdrop for continuing tension with the neighbors, people named the Roses, who are threatening a lawsuit if the Therrian's dog, Otis, doesn't stop yapping. To diffuse this potential problem, the Therrians invite these neighbors over for their sixth anniversary party, along with a large coterie of their best friends.

The movie doesn't really pick up until the guests begin to arrive. Before that it is the usual badinage involving the de rigueur wealthy Los Angeles Hispanic domestic who is there to prepare food for the party, a woman named America (Norizzela Monterosso) and the mundane problems that seem to plague almost any married couple. We learn gradually, however, that the Therrians have just gotten back together after a split, that they long for a child and that Joe has a drug- addicted sister back in his native London who he has sorely neglected.

Then, though, a parade of stars you wouldn't expect in a little production such as this one begins to arrive, and with them a variety of little dramas and subplots (the film was shot in 19 days using hand-held video cameras): Kevin Kline, his real-life wife Phoebe Cates, the character actor John C. Reilly ("Boogie Nights," "The Perfect Storm") and even megastar Gwyneth Paltrow.

Cates and Leigh are close friends in real life. They met when they made "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" almost 20 years ago, and they have been friends ever since. (That may still be, ironically, the best film either of them has done since.) Cates is appealing in this film as one of the few actually adult characters. She acts as a big sister to the fragile and neurotic Leigh, and even brings her kids to the party.

Kline also plays Cates' husband in the film, a big-but-appealing kid himself, and the kids are the couple's real-life children, Owen and Greta, both of whom are impossibly cute and precocious, just the way we expect Hollywood children to be. They are the only people in this film who seem real, in fact.

Leigh has recast herself in a now all-too-familiar role as a bitter victim, and other characters -- especially the actress Jane Adams as Clair Forsyth, an actress who is even more neurotic still -- are just hard to swallow.

But perhaps the most annoying portion of the film comes when the party thins down, and everyone spends the rest of the evening high on Ecstasy. This is when, as a dramatic device, all of the pithier events of the evening take place, including a near drowning, a tragic revelation, news of a loved one's death, a crisis with the family dog and more melodrama.

Yes, the writing is clever enough, and the accomplished Cumming and Leigh are certainly good at their crafts, be it writing, directing or acting. It's just that, in the end, these are people we can't identify with or give a rip about. And if these are the problems of the rich and famous, they are more than welcome to them.