Big Time

This PBS American Playhouse experimental take on Keith Reddin's satirical play about the empty lives of three yuppies in an unfulfilling love triangle is as tedious and unpleasant to watch as 84 minutes of Diet Coke commercials from the era strung together on a loop. Director Jan Egelson, a master of American kitchen-sink dramas about working-class folks, clearly has zero interest in material like this and, rather than attempt to make a conventional banal, vapid film about banal vapid people, he turns it into a homage to cinematic provocateur of the French New Wave, Jean-Luc Godard. But that is far worse than a generic approach to this dull material would have rendered. I mean, Godard is Godard, but Godard homages are almost always unwatchable, especially when shot for video.

Mia Sara (of Ferris Bueller's Day Off) plays Fran, a fashion model who wants to be an actress; Dennis Boutsikaris (of The Dream Team) plays Michael, her investment banker boyfriend who is unable to commit to her; and Adrian Pasdar (of Near Dark) plays Paul, a photographer who is having an affair with Fran even though he's Michael's friend. The beautiful Sara, who was in far too few movies, seems like she's really trying to create a character here if the filmmakers would let her. She soon realizes that Boutsikaris, who almost always plays a slimeball in movies, is unworthy of her, but Pasdar, who plays a winey little shit, is just a different kind of asshole. The film juxtaposes imagery from the various media these people work in and consume every day, and, like all "innovative" experimental films made during the dawn of the video age, it becomes real tedious real fast. The movie looks down its nose at '80s media trends in advertising, commercial photography, and music videos, but how can you look down at something when you're at the bottom of the barrel yourself?