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THE MUSE Send This Review to a Friend
Firmly taking its place among the best comedies made about Hollywood, the lethally funny and wickedly creative "The Muse" has been directed with sophistication and good sense by Albert Brooks, who co-wrote the screenplay with Monica Johnson. The satirical idea at the core, developed with easygoing wit, is a nifty one.
Brooks, acting with masterly comic understatement, plays screenwriter Steven Phillips, who is callously told by a shallow, ignorant young studio producer (Mark Feuerstein) that he has "lost his edge." Not only is Steven's latest script rejected; he is unceremoniously ordered to vacate his office immediately. Suddenly he feels that he is a nonentity. Encouragement by his wife (Andie MacDowell) doesn't help ease his panic about finding work to support her and their children.
Enter the writer's close friend Jack (Jeff Bridges), who is consistently successful. Taking pity, Jack lets his buddy in on the secret to which he attributes his success. He has found a real-life Muse supposedly descended from the Muses of mythology. Steven will try anything. Sarah, the Muse, doesn't write scripts, but inspires them. Jack sets up a meeting with her for Steven. She turns out to be a very expensive and demanding Muse. Sharon Stone is marvelously funny as Sarah--sexy, haughty, insistent upon getting gifts and living extravagantly, now on Steven's money.
Outlandish? Of course, but that's the point. In Hollywood they'll believe anything that relieves insecurity. A running joke is the revelation of how many famous individuals, who play themselves, are secretly relying on Sarah, including Rob Reiner, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron and even Wolfgang Puck of the chic restaurant Spago. A lesser writer-director than Brooks might follow the easiest route of piling on complications of sexual misunderstandings involving a man so closely involved with another woman, Muse or not. The film flirts with this a bit, but veers into much funnier territory as Steven's wife begins to find inspiration of her own. There's also a sardonic development and a final zinger of a ultra-cynical finish.
But what makes the satire really work is the comic depiction of the details about the daily indignities encountered in the movie business, such as the great effort it takes to even get near seeing Steven Spielberg, or the routines of Hollywood life. Playing tennis is mocked, with Bridges serving balls that never cross the net while Brooks never gets a chance to hit one back. Just showing the number of tennis balls piled up on one side of the net earns a laugh.
Brooks the actor makes the perfect victim. He has his put-upon look down pat and is perfect delivering cleverly nasty retorts. Brooks the director knows how to use music carefully, in this case music by Elton John . The costume details are perfectly in tune with establishing the Hollywood environment and so are various shots that say much visually.
"The Muse" is a thinking person's comedy, and its blast at business attitudes that cast aside individuals as if they were objects reaches beyond the immediate target. There are universal truths in the fears of being over-the-hill and the frantic efforts to find some mystical force as a solution. A USA Films/October Films release.
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