Rating (1 to 10) : 4
Summary: Claire Goldstein is an aspiring pianist trying to handle various crises of her life so she can re-focus on her career.
Sometimes actors and actresses do different types of movies to prevent them from being typecast and Alicia Witt took this role for that very reason. After she had her breakout role in “Mr. Holland’s Opus” and then starred in “Urban Legend”, Alicia Witt has tried to do different types of movies so she’d be flexible and not typecast. Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t seem to help her career much.
“Playing Mona Lisa” is based on the play “Two Goldsteins on Acid” and it’s about Claire Goldstein (Alicia Witt), an aspiring pianist whose world comes crashing down while trying to win career-making auditions. Her boyfriend Jeremy, a classmate of hers, dumps her after proposing to her. To top it all off after her heart getting crushed, there is an earthquake that forces Claire to move out of her apartment and back in with her parents.
After Claire hits rock bottom, she tries to get back to her musical auditions and into the dating scene. Her friend Sabrina (Brooke Langton) gives her some advice about picking up on men – she needs to have the look of Mona Lisa, the mysterious smile that makes men wonder. Thus the title of the movie. She meets Eddie (Ivan Sergei), a handsome man that seems like a real find after being jilted by Jeremy. But there seems to be more to Eddie than meets the eye.
There is also her piano teacher Bennett, who is trying to get Claire out of her funk and back to practicing and auditioning. Bennett is played by Harvey Fierstein in his typecast role, that of the husky-voiced but effeminate gay man. But no matter how hard Bennett tries to get Claire re-focused on her musical skills, Claire is still bothered by her breakup with Jeremy even though she is now dating Eddie. In fact, every audition that Bennett sets up for her results in Claire no-showing or Claire having a nervous breakdown. The struggle in the movie is if Claire will ever get her life back in order to utilize her potential as a talented pianist.
There are some notable supporting actors – Elliott Gould, Marlo Thomas, and Molly Hagan (even Sandra Bernhard makes a cameo). With the cast, I expected a romantic comedy with sophisticated humor but this movie wasn’t all that funny. There are some dialogues that might bring a smirk to your face. The scene where Claire first tries out her “Mona Lisa” look was somewhat funny but the funniest scene is when Claire’s parents ingest LSD and trip out, which seems a bit incongruous with the rest of the type of humor of the movie. There are some “six degrees of separation” twists in the story but they seem contrived. The script definitely did not use Alicia Witt’s talent to the fullest – it’s as if she was cast just to play a “pretty face”. If Alicia Witt wanted to show her adaptability by having a lackluster role in a mediocre movie, this one is it. Let’s hope that it’s the last one for her.
Why you should or should not see this movie:
If you are bored and want to kill time watching a slightly entertaining movie that you won’t remember much of the next day, this one is for you.
Bennett: “You know I once heard someone say ‘When you dim your light so someone else can shine, the whole world gets darker.’”