LITTLE chuckles rather than the big laughs you keep waiting for are what you get in “Cold Souls,” a mildly funny metaphysical comedy about a famous actor who takes desperate measures to deliver a stage performance in “Uncle Vanya.”
This famous actor is the wonderful Paul Giamatti, whose variety of roles — he’s been in everything from “Big Momma’s House” to “John Adams” to “Sideways” — ensures he can’t spoof his on-screen persona the way the titular character did in “Being John Malkovich.”
Sophie Barthes reportedly wrote “Cold Souls” for Woody Allen, and you can see that, as well as why Allen turned it down. The Woodman has parodied his public image in far funnier movies; in the best of them, he knows how to milk a gimmick in a way that sometimes eludes Barthes.
“Giamatti” is so daunted by his new stage role that he takes himself to Roosevelt Island, where an outfit he’s read about in the New Yorker offers to lighten his neuroses by sucking out his soul — which he’s abashed to learn resembles a chickpea — and putting it in cold storage.
David Strathairn is amusing as the crackpot doctor running the soul-storage company, who later offers to temporarily rent Giamatti the soul of what he falsely claims is a Russian poet.
This results in a very over-the-top rehearsal — not to mention marital complications — so Giamatti returns to reclaim his own soul.
Only it’s nowhere to be found, not even at the storage facility in New Jersey Strathairn uses to avoid sales tax.
A trafficker (Dina Korzun) has smuggled it back to Russia, where it’s been implanted in the soap-
opera-star wife of a mobster. The couple believes it was actually sucked from Al Pacino, one of several Americans on a wish list that did not include Giamatti.
Allen at his peak probably would have brought this premise in at well under 90 minutes; Barthes lets it drag on for more than 100, including far too many pretentious “atmospheric” shots actually made in St. Petersburg.
Worse, Barthes squanders the talents of Emily Watson as Giamatti’s confused wife, and Lauren Ambrose as Strathairn’s brusque assistant.
Giamatti tries very hard to put over “Cold Souls” — some of his reaction shots are priceless — but it’s going to leave some people, well, cold.
COLD SOULS Pseudo-Woody. Running time: 101 minutes. Rated PG-13 (nudity, brief profanity). At the Lincoln Plaza and the Sunshine.