Cheap The Anniversary Party (DVD) (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Alan Cumming) (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Alan Cumming) Price

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Customer Reviews of The Anniversary Party

Titles for reviews are stupid...read the review.
Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh write, direct, and star in a movie in which their characters are a writer/director and a star. The Anniversary Party is a beautiful movie about how miserable people can be and what lousy people people can be. About how horrible life can be and how everything we try to do to make it better only makes it worse. The film takes place in and around the home of Joe (Cumming) and Sally (Leigh) Therrian during their 6th anniversary party. They have invited 14 guests-- friends, colleagues, and their neighbors, who they hate, but invited anyway in hopes that they can come to a mutual understanding.

Nearly all of these people are famous (or semi-famous) in some way-- writers, directors, actors, musicians, etc.-- or if not, they're at least married to someone who is. All of the characters appear to be of a-few-loose-screws-in-the-attic sort, except for Monica Rose (the neighbor's wife, played to perfection by Mina Badie), who is totally out of her element among the rest of the parties guests. She attempts to do right by everyone around her and still be true to herself, while everyone around her tries only to do and say what is best for themselves... The Anniversary Party is a must see film for anyone who has ever been miserable and wondered if anyone had it nearly as bad as they do. And for everyone who hasn't, you should watch it too.

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Party On, Jennifer and Alan!
The Anniversary Party was dismissed in some circles as a vanity project since two well-known actors, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming, not only wrote and directed it, but also starred in it and cast their friends in the other roles. The problem with the dismissal it that it assumes that all so-called vanity projects, which I don't think The Anniversary Project really is, are bad news. My belief is that any movie should be judged on its own merits, not by the in and outs of how and why it was made.

I think this is one of the best and most insightful pictures ever made about people who work in the movie business. It is also an intimate, bittersweet portrait of the relationship between a movie star, whose career has peaked, and her writer husband, whose own success is just beginning to soar.

It is not an action movie. The whole thing takes place in a 24-hour period during which the couple throws a party to celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary. It is a low budget movie, shot on digital video, then transferred to film stock. It has a literate script but is not what I consider to be high brow. In fact, it's decidedly earthy and contains a great deal of scathing humor. If you aren't interested in Hollywood types or if you don't care for slice of life stories that delve into the darker elements of a relationship, this one isn't for you.

Sally and Joe [Leigh and Cumming] may have made it as a couple for six years, but it's been a rocky road. He left her and moved to London for a year. He's been back for six months. An underlying tension remains between them. On the morning of the party we find them outside by their pool getting instructions from their yoga teacher. Meanwhile, two maids prepare for the party. We see that Sally and Joe are rather spoiled. Joe has writing a new novel and has been chosen to direct the film version of it. Though he claims that it's a work of fiction, everyone knows that the main character is based on Sally. She isn't pleased that rising young star Skye Davidson [Gwyneth Paltrow] has been cast as this character, but the sad fact is that Sally is really to old to play her. In the afternoon, guests begin to arrive, and an interesting assortment of people they are. As the movie progresses, we see how intertwined these people's lives are and how codependent they are on each other. We see how the bonds of friendship can sometimes be a mixed blessing. As day turns into night, the party guests, having consumed quite a bit of wine, become looser and looser. When Skye gives the couple several hits of the drug Ecstasy as an anniversary gift, they pass them around to their guests. Secrets and lies come out that will forever change Sally and Joe, though not necessarily for the worse. The movie leaves it up to the audience to decide if their relationship will survive.

Vanity project or not, Leigh and Cumming are right on the money about a certain segment of Hollywood. I lived in Los Angeles for seven years, and some of the movie seems so real that I began to feel like one of the guests instead of an audience member. It is easy to dismiss people in the business as being neurotically insecure. While insecurity seems to be built into artistic types, I found that part of the problem for the ones who make movies for a living is that every job they take is temporary. This unavoidable fact tends to make them see everything as short-lived.

There are too many great performances here to singles any one out. This is an ensemble piece.

The photography is some of the best work in digital video I have seen so far. This process is revolutionizing movies because it is drastically lowering the cost. How much cheaper is it? The standard film stock used in The Anniversary Party's three-minute underwater sequence cost more than the digital stock used in the rest of the movie. It cut in half the time required to shoot the movie. I suspect small budget movies are about to make a big comeback.

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Art House Soap Opera
Sorry, it's not a good film. It starts very slowly, has some bright spots in the middle, then descends into embarrassingly overwrought and contrived melodrama. Alan Cumming and Jennifer Jason Leigh star, wrote and directed - and obviously needed an honest friend to tell them when things were going wrong. For instance, it's a mistake for Cumming to play (overplay?) his big emotional scenes looking like an overgrown skateboarder. He can be a funny guy and an excellent character actor, but he's not leading man material. Meanwhile, Leigh seems to have overdosed on angst. The words "self indulgent" spring to mind repeatedly while watching this film.

Although intended as an ensemble piece, the two leads tend to keep a tight hold on center stage. Their writing is probably the weakest point. The performances by the starry cast may be good (not all of them are though) but it's impossible to feel anything for any of the characters. Brief relief are provided by a marvellous Peter Sellers impression and flashes of female breasts.

In the end, the film provokes two impossible questions - Why did they make it and why are we sitting here watching it? Strictly for viewers as pretentious as the characters.