Not so much a title as an editorial. The movie itself makes a natural companion piece to Alan Rudolph's The Moderns: rubbing shoulders once more with the artistic titans of the Twenties, only now in New York instead of Paris. A core group of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Marc Connelly, Robert Sherwood, George Kaufman -- in a word, or a label, the Algonquin Round Table. "It must have been so colorful in the Twenties," enthuses a romantic soul, less soured than Rudolph, in the black-and-white prologue in Hollywood in 1937, thus cueing a color flashback. But the color is all yellowy. Which is to say, not so colorful after all. In fact, not so much a color as another smuggled editorial. A jaundiced view. Parker, a great literary "figure" with a slim body of work, is given her expected due as an extemporaneous wit: "I may die before a train of thought leaves the station"; "Don't look at me in that tone of voice"; "I like my apartment. It's just big enough to lay my hat and a few friends"; and so forth. But as with seemingly all writers' portraits on screen, the work, slight though in this case it might be, gets slighted. Or more exactly, in this case again, slightered. And the periodic device of having the author, back in black-and-white, recite samples of her poems into the camera is pretty thoroughly sabotaged by Jennifer Jason Leigh's sleepy, slurry, sloshed delivery. Short as they are, the poems could easily have been printed out on screen, to be read in silence. Short though they are, they'd have stood taller. With Campbell Scott, Matthew Broderick. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
This movie is not currently in theaters.