“Enough Said” offers comedic relief and truthful conversation.
“Enough Said” is a hilarious, delightful and insightful romantic comedy with sharp writing and performances. Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a masseuse and a divorced mother of a teenage daughter.
She goes to a party with her married friends Sarah (Toni Collette) and Will (Ben Falcone) where she meets a poet named Marianne (Catherine Keener). Eva begins performing massages for Marianne and they become friends. Both of them are divorced middle-aged women with teenage daughters about to go off to college. Eva also meets a shy, overweight man named Albert (James Gandolfini) at the party, and they end up going on a date and becoming a couple. More than half an hour into the film, there is a revelation that would be best for the viewer not to know going into the film.
Sadly, the trailer gives this away. Nicole Holofcener (“Friends with Money,” “Please Give”) wrote and directed this romantic comedy, one of the most charming and funny films of the year. It is like a snug sweater that feels warm and comforting. It is not just disposable fun because it is also honest and at times, raw. The twist in the middle could have turned the film into a sitcom or farce, but the writing is always connected to the characters. Holofcener does not push the characters through the plot for cheap laughs and lazy comic scenarios. Much of the film is quiet and relaxed, letting the characters flirt and interact. Louis-Dreyfus is one of the most gifted comedians working today. She can be hilarious with her fractured, neurotic smile and by nervously looking off to the side and not looking directly at the person she is talking to. There is an insecurity in her character that makes her funny but also relatable and poignant. The late Gandolfini, who passed away this summer at age 51, is perfectly cast as Albert.
He is a soft-spoken teddy bear with a graying beard. Who would have thought Elaine Benes and Tony Soprano would make such a lovely screen pair? Too many Hollywood romantic films are about people that look like airbrushed models. These films are manufactured fluff that produce false representations of love and relationships. It is refreshing to see a romantic comedy where intelligent, flawed characters fall in love with each other. The comic sensibility of the film is a mix of Woody Allen, Albert Brooks, and “Seinfeld.” It is like Allen’s films because it is about the relationships among a group of interesting characters and how love is complicated and painful and wonderful. It is like Albert Brooks and “Seinfeld” because the characters are frequently making clever, sarcastic comments about their life and people they encounter. Holofcener made a comedy that is for and about people that care about true love and humor.