Living Out Loud 

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Director: Richard LaGravenese
Cast: Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito, Rachel Leigh Cook, Queen Latifah, Richard Schiff
Genre: Romance

"Living Out Loud" is a movie flavored with the same feeling as "As Good As It Gets," and, like that movie, takes its sweet time to get where it's going. Holly Hunter is a recently divorced 40-something living in a swank uptown apartment. Caged by her own swirling demons of loneliness, she befriends Danny DeVito, an elevator operator with all kinds of problems of his own. Throw in Queen Latifah as a lounge singer with a desperate love for gay men, and you've got the recipe for Unlikely Romance.

Richard LaGravanese wrote and directed "Living Out Loud," and as in his "Fisher King," he seems to relish in Impossible Relationships. He likes having scenes imbued with a sort of ethereal magic; shots linger on our characters, waiting for them to do something interesting, and thankfully, they almost always do. When DeVito propositions Hunter in the most logical way possible, it has shades of the dinner scene in "Fisher King" between Robin Williams and Amanda Plummer—you can't imagine it EVER working, yet that niggling 1 percent of your soul desperately wants to see it happen.

When firing on all imaginative pistons, LaGravanese can spin magic; drunk at what could only be a lesbian club, Holly Hunter wades through the crowd, touching, feeling—until all the dancers spin in tandem in a glorious display of synchronized sexuality. It's like a postmodern MGM musical, and God knows I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.

Still, there's something tepid about the whole thing; it's not quite a story. We get a good trip through the tightly coiled psyche of Hunter (who's terrific), but the emotions never pan out, and LaGravanese's vision of a woman finally freed of her loneliness doesn't quite have the catharsis you want. It's a salt-free treat, leaving you thirsty for a bit more intensity.

—Ian Williams

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