Search - Duane Hopwood on DVD

Divorce, Addiction, and Other Obstacles in the Path to Happi

Grady Harp | Los Angeles, CA United States | 04/30/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Matt Mulhern is an actor turned writer/director in this amazingly fine first feature film. If DUANE HOPWOOD is any indication of the storehouse of creative and gently profound films housed in Mulhern's mind, we have a major artist being birthed.

Duane Hopwood (David Schwimmer) is a loser: despite the fact that he is one of the most loving beings around, he is plagued by the realities of life - working a testy night job as a pit boss in Caesar's Palace in Atlantic City, failing to be present for a wife and two girls he loves but neglects due to his working hours and that has resulted in divorce, alcoholism, and failure to repair - he just can't make his life work. After a DUI arrest in which Duane has inadvertently jeopardized the life of one of his passenger daughters, is ex-wife Linda (Janeane Garofalo) is driven to prevent visitation rights to a man she recognizes is in truth a loving father who simply can't cope. Duane lives alone until his casino friend Anthony (Judah Friedlander), a would be stand up comic, asks to share Duane's home. Duane's bad luck follows him even when he is trying to give despicable people a fair break at the casino and hence loses his job. He attempts to date a kind Irish bartender Gina (Susan Lynch) but fails that role when he confesses that he still loves his wife. The ultimate blow comes when Linda and her new boyfriend Bob (John Krasinski) decide to move to North Carolina, a fact that means Duane will rarely see his beloved daughters. And his life continues to pall-mall despite all the loving hands offered by the good people around him.

The story has no beginning and no end. It is a slice of life about an Everyman wracked by bad decisions, good at heart but unable to control his propensities, and the effects of addiction, divorce, and loneliness on a kind but bumbling soul. David Schwimmer gives a deeply moving performance, one that is so sensitively rendered that it holds mirrors to us all, making us love him as much as the people around him who stand by helplessly by as he spirals down the hole of self-destructive behavior. Janeane Garofalo likewise steps out of her usual silly chubby mouthy roles and gives us an injured but wholly understandable bruised woman: her acting is the finest she has ever given us. The entire cast (with some surprise appearances by some fine actors) is top notch, but in the end the kudos go to Matt Mulhern for offering us one of the best examinations of divorce and modern marriage with an eye that clearly sees both sides of trauma. This is an underrated, superb film that deserves a wide audience. Grady Harp, April 06"

From Kramer to Hopwood

Leung Tse Choi | 04/23/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Every five modern drama made in the last three decades at least one was about divorced family or in some way involve the divorcee and their children. It took Hollywood cinema that long to come to terms with this social phenomenon. David Schwimmer (as Duane Hopwood) is struggling to reverse the denial of his visiting right to his children after he was caught drunk-and-drive while his daughter was in his car in the beginning of `Duane Hopwood' (2005).

The film is brief and precise in portraying Schwimmer, as a loving husband and father of two but needed to go to work in a casino at odd hours and as a result too tired to attend to his daughters and wife, within the first few minutes through a series of speechless montage. Even we are under the impression Duane has drinking problem, throughout the film this problem and his behavior disorder are never revealed in depth. Neither the cause of his dismissal from the job or his hostility toward his ex-wife's boyfriend is due to his drinking problem. Even his wife, who filed the denial of his visiting right to the children and finally decided to take the children away to another town, is not portrayed as cruel and unreasonable but rather sympathetic on the contrary.

Unlike many films before starting `Kramer vs. Kramer' (1979), it is obvious that this film does not make anyone or any societal situation as an escapegoat to the cause of the divorce and its unfortunate result. Many others till this day, like `The Squid and the Whale' (2005) and `The Weather Man' (2005), still tries to find the cause of the tragedy of divorce family in one of its characters' personality deficiency. And their efforts will never present us a satisfactory remedy. "I don't know whether I drink so my wife left me or my wife left me so that I drink," said Nicolas Cage in his reply to Elisabeth Shue about his situation in the beginning of `Leaving Las Vegas' (1995). `Duane Hopwood' is a milestone of Hollywood family drama for it's portraying of modern divorced family and the remedy it provides.
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