Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle

Mrs Parker vicious wit rules, okay!
The biting and caustic wit of Mrs Parker is bought superbly to life by the versatile actress Jennifer Jason Leigh who plays the brittle writer, critic and sometimes playwright to vulnerable perfection.

This is not an easy film to watch and I can understand why some people found it hard to get into. I mean the 1920s were supposedly a time of fun, jazz, speak easy booze and laughter all around, the Great War was over and life was back to normal.

However watching the desperation of Mrs Parker's generation, the bright young things drink themselves silly, take drugs and lash out at each other in a perpetual game of verbal cat-o-nine-tails makes you realise that perhaps everything was not as "normal" as most people hoped.

The film jumps back and forth through Mrs Parker's life, some of the best scenes are in black and white, and we are treated to subtle barbs, cruel wit and tasty treats in the guise of a crackingly good cast, with Mathew Broderick doing himself proud as the...

You won't be disappointed
Critics moaned when Jennifer Jason Leigh was tapped to portray Dorothy Parker, the Grand Lady of Barbed Words whose light shone brightest in the colorful 1920s. And, predictably, many critics trashed Leigh's performance. But, while Leigh made her name making sexy comedies and sexy thrillers, she actually does an excellent job here as the witty wordsmith in "Mrs. Parker & the Vicious Circle." OK, so she played a sexy wordsmith, getting naked with fellow writer Charles MacArthur (Matthew Broderick) for an eye-candy romp. But the sex and nudity, for all its visual appeal, could have hit the cutting-room floor without much being lost from the film. The romance that makes this film worth watching is the romance that never happens: Parker's non-romance with humorist Robert Benchley (Campbell Scott).

Let's face it, Broderick shared top billing with Leigh because he's a name. But it's Scott who deserved it; it's Scott's Benchley who provided an excellent foil for matching wits and...

Vicious Circle not for squares
I loved this movie. For those who were captivated by Jennifer Jason-Leigh's over-the-top performance in The Hudsucker Proxy, Mrs Parker is a must-see movie. JJL wears a bob and a cloche hat like nobody else. Her dialogue is not, as some have said, incomprehensible, but simply a marvellous re-rendering of that fabulously affected clipped New England style favoured by street-wise New Yorkers of the period, as essential to the production as the wardrobe. See this movie and then read The Great Gatsby, or, even better, Butterfield 8. The books will then come alive. I particularly liked the way black and white was used for the 'flash-forward' sequences, and colour for her more colourful, happier past in the twenties, unlike the opposite method which is usually used. A movie with great style and earnest attention to period detail - It's got me reading Dorothy Parker's poetry, whereas before seeing this movie I knew nothing about her.

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