Greg Pritikin's Dummy is a mildly engaging addition to that curious sub-genre of American independent filmmaking, the whimsical comedy of Long Island alienation. It was probably Hal Hartley who initiated this cycle of lovable losers confronting soulless surburbanism in his early films The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and Trust (1990), though one of the finest examples is Eric Mendelsohn's Judy Berlin (1999).
The carefully ambiguous title of Dummy, which opens today nationwide, could refer equally to Adrien Brody's Steven, a painfully shy young man who, though now in his mid-20's, is still living with his squabbling parents (Jessica Walter and Rob Leibman) and his tragically unmarried older sister, Heidi (Illeana Douglas), or to the unnamed ventriloquist's dummy who is his alter ego and closest companion. "You look like a child molester," Heidi says when she walks in on Steven, sitting on his bed and holding the dummy on his lap.
PHOTO COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL
But the dummy is no child. Speaking in a voice far more confident and commanding than Steven's own (Brody performs his own ventriloquism, and quite nicely), the dummy becomes everything Steven has wanted to be but could never become: an outspoken, independent adult. Rehearsing obsessively with his little friend, Steven slowly emerges from his shell, enough to attempt the clumsy courtship of Lorena (Vera Farmiga), his kind-faced counselor at the local unemployment office.
Dummy is full of infantile adults: apart from Steven and Heidi, there are Heidi's former fiance, Michael (Jared Harris), an accountant with substance-abuse problems, and Steven's fellow high school misfit, a young woman (Milla Jovovich), who has taken the name Fangora in pursuit of her career as a screaming punk rocker.
Steven turns to Fangora for tips on approaching the opposite sex. She suggests spray-painting a love note on Lorena's front door, which he does with predictably disastrous results.
The gentle childishness of the characters gives Dummy a genuine sweetness that turns into treacle from time to time. Fangora, who dresses up in elaborate lace and leather outfits that seem to have been stolen from Courtney Love's closet, is so desperate to put her band to work that she accepts a gig playing klezmer music at a wedding, without knowing what klezmer is. Fangora's attempt to familiarize herself and her marginally talented backup musicians with the Yiddish folk music is funny at first but becomes more tiresome each time Mr. Pritikin returns to it.
Brody's performance hardly has the weight of his Oscar-winning work in The Pianist (which was made after Dummy was filmed), but he is a likable presence, with the craning neck and goggling eyes of a just-hatched chicken.
Jovovich, who performs with a rock band in real life, turns out to be an able comedian, far more at home in farce than as the title character in Luc Besson's unfortunate Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. And it is always a pleasure to see Walter, who earned her place in film history as Clint Eastwood's smiling stalker in the 1973 Play Misty for Me.
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