How can you resist seeing a movie with that tagline at least once? Evelyn Waugh's "little nightmare" of Los Angeles gets the all-star treatment in skewering modern society's reduction of art, religion, even the rituals of marriage & death to a vast, industrialized hustle. Unemployed English poet Barlow (Morse, England's precursor to Robin Williams) turns up in L.A. and camps out with his uncle, artist and impresario Sir Francis (Gielgud, who brings Waugh's sad English gentleman to life as no one else could). Tragedy leads Barlow to the services of Whispering Glades, a huge necropolis theme park, a somber Disneyland of the Dead. He falls for ditzy but deadly serious mortuary cosmetologist Aimee (Comer, a scarier California babe than Buffy), but strikes out with her until finding she melts over poetry. Unable to resuscitate his own muse, he plagiarizes the masters to keep Aimee on the hook, especially after gaining a rival in Mr. Joyboy (Steiger), the cemetery's master embalmer, who uses Aimee's ambition in their shared craft to his own advantage. With so many stars in supporting roles, the film has even more subplots than the book did--a feature that even "The Godfather" can't claim. Like any good satire, the film is best appreciated for its individual parts rather than the whole story, which may wind up preposterous, as this one does. The stars each represent an aspect of Waugh's vision, a society cheapened by the illusion of equality conjured by reducing beauty to the lowest common denominator. Notable are neurotic studio exec DJ, Jr. (McDowell), drunken advice columnist Guru Brahmin (Stander), cowboy-actor-turned-James Bond Dusty Acres (the amazing Robert Easton), impatient socialite Kenton (Berle) and his melodramatic wife (Leighton), snobbish film star Sir Ambrose (Morley) and the phony dignity of coffin salesman Starker (Liberace, truly one of a kind). Winters is fine in a dual role as cemetery owner & rapacious real estate devloper The Blessed Reverend & his brother, a washed-up movie producer. Steiger has never been more bizarre and scenes with his gluttonous mother (Gibbons, fascinating in a stomach-turning role) will have even Tarantino devotees running for the porcelain shrine. But English high society doesn't escape the knife, as the opportunistic Barlow first woos Aimee with his plundered rhyme and then tries to sponge off her. The film is faintly misogynistic, like the book and much of Waugh's other work (except his reverent novella, "Helena"). Aimee is both crazy & shallow, a cardboard cutout of the advertising world's average American female, and her whole identity depends on illusions spun by Joyboy, Barlow and the "Guru Brahmin." Screenwriter Southern, much better at conceiving satire than polishing it, adds morbidly wacky and sometimes chilling scenes to a film that otherwise closely follows the book. There are more laughs in "The Loved One" than any but the most alert mind can take in with one viewing. But there's no gentleness, the cutting edge never lets up. This is not for the weak of mind or the weak of stomach, nor is it a fun, relaxing diversion. It's high culture sweeping low. Take wing with it, if you dare, or duck.
Review of The Loved One
