LISA PICARD IS FAMOUS []
Hip, gently nasty satire about struggling New York actors. Running time: 87 minutes. Not Rated. Film Forum, Houston Street, between Sixth Avenue and Varick Street.
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FOR its first few minutes, “Lisa Picard Is Famous” looks to be an irritatingly smug, faux-naif mock-documentary going for an easy if deserving target: earnest self-involved young actors. But it turns into something that is much smarter, and in a gentle, low-key way, tougher and funnier than you expect.
Lisa Picard (Laura Kirk) is a struggling New York actress who has just achieved some notoriety for a sexy cereal commercial. That and a small role in a Melissa Gilbert TV movie could mean that she’s finally about to break out, and a documentary filmmaker (Griffin Dunne) is ready to record every aspect of that journey to celebrity.
He’s curious to see how it will change the way Lisa looks and walks, not to mention the way she relates to her friends, like Tate Kelley (Nat DeWolf), a gay actor assembling what looks bound to be a desperately sad and bad one-man, off-off Broadway show called “Hate Crimes and Broken Hearts.”
It would far be too easy to make fun of a couple of solipsistic would-be thespians and, fortunately, the makers of this film – stars/co-writers Laura Kirk and Nat DeWolf, and director/star Dunne – are too smart to fall into that trap.
They have no illusions about the arbitrariness of show-business success, and they make sure that “Lisa Picard” also throws some satirical darts at ruthless, prurient documentary filmmakers.
Even more impressive, the film also has a pleasingly delicate, thoughtful sense of what success and failure really do to people. By the time you get to the clever ending, you’ve seen just how fame can bring out the best in people and their work, and how obscurity can do just the opposite.
As well as enjoyable cameos by Mira Sorvino (who also produced), Sandra Bullock, Carrie Fisher, Penelope Ann Miller, Charlie Sheen and the dog from “There’s Something About Mary” – all playing themselves – the film also includes a devastating dig at the current New York Times theater critic.