Duane Hopwood Movie Review

Call it the Leaving Las Vegas effect: Everybody wants to make a movie where they play a disgusting antihero who, even as he self-destructs, manages to find a way to redeem himself in the end, even if he's still a dangerous drunk and his personal growth is just minimal. That's well and good, but I'm not sure that David Schwimmer is the go-to guy for such a role. Obviously trying to break free from a decade of typecasting as a nervous geek, he's uncomfortably out of place here and the performance just doesn't work. Things turn out better for Jeneane Garofalo as our pal Duane's ex-wife, though her underwritten role meant that I barely recognized her before the end. Safe to skip. "Hopwood," incidentally, was the plaintiff in the famous "reverse discrimination" lawsuit that ended affirmative action in many arenas. When it's more entertaining to think about an old legal case than watch a movie it has nothing to do with, well... hmmmm.