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MARGARITA HAPPY HOUR Send This Review to a Friend
This modest little film attempts to say something meaningful about the problems faced by women. Its method is a plot that involves five women acquaintances who enjoy meeting in a Brooklyn café to compare notes and talk about their respective troubles. They do so while sipping margaritas of various colors, hence the title, although "happy hour" is ironic. These gals are not very happy.
The difficulty with the film is that, for all its good intentions, the women at the center of the cinema verite-type drama are not particularly interesting. In fact, they can at times make one wish for a margarita to nurse while watching. The actresses are fine, including Eleanor Hutchins as Zelda, a single mom who is an artist and is trying to navigate through life. She has a live-in boyfriend named Max (Larry Fessenden), but the relationship has its pro and con sides.
Zelda has a close friend named Natali, played by Holly Ramos, who moves in, and that's another complication. So are the hangers-on. Zelda's big problem is what to do with her life. She desperately needs to move away from its present stage and somehow break loose.
One can observe similar frustrations on the part of the other margarita sippers. Ilya Chaiken has both written and directed the film, which despite a few amusing and thought-provoking moments and dialogue that seems realistic, tends to become somewhat tedious as it progresses. Have another drink. A Passport Pictures and Susie Q Productions release.
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