The Girl Can’t Help It-Peter Bogdanovich’s She’s Funny That Way     

 

 

 

 

 

 DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

She’s Funny That Way, starring Owen Wilson, Imogen Poots, directed by Peter Bogdanovich, 2015

The hooker with the heart of gold, or with a heart anyway is a staple of modern cinema, although now looked at through the lens of modern technology, the Internet with the rise of on-line escort services to keep the girls off the dangerous streets and away from the bad actors out there-a little anyway. The idea of the heart of gold though, or at least a heart gets a twist in the film under review, Peter Bogdanovich’s She’s Funny That Way, since it is the “John” who distributes the gold to make some dreams come true. This slapdash comedy moves very quickly through its subject matter and I will too.

Arnold (aka Derek) played by the comic wizard Owen Wilson is a Broadway director married to a glamorous actress. But like a lot of guys he looks for his loving on the side as well. On the side being meaning being provided with escorts (we will use that term rather than the more judgmental hooker or whore in this comic sent-up) up in his lonely hotel room. Arnold though has this funny habit of bestowing his largess on certain escorts who show some promise. That is where his latest “protégé” Izzy comes in. See she is star-struck, wants to be an actress and is just slumming as an escort. Bingo Arnold lays thirty thou on her and she is off. The film revolves around her two worlds, as budding actress and slumming escort and the worlds of the other characters, Arnold’s wife, an actress who is the lead in Arnold’s latest play, the lead male actor who also likes a little something on the side who is in love with Arnold’s wife, the playwright who falls for Izzy and her fetching unpretentious ways, the playwright’s girlfriend who is Izzy’ off-the-wall therapist and on and on. This is a harmless bit of flush, nobody gets hurt too badly and things work themselves out in the end, and so should be taken that way. Certainly not on the grand scale of Bogdanovich’s classic The Last Picture Show that made his career but a funny way to spent an hour and one half.