Let's get retarded in here!
Now, to my mind, there's nothing more crass than a B-list celebrity trying to garner a career boost (and - perchance to dream - an Oscar/Emmy clip) by playing a character with a mental disability. A few years ago, there was this movie where Juliette Lewis and Giovianni Ribisi reduced serious mental disability to an exercise in mawkish infantile cuteness. Even Rain Man makes me squirm a bit.It's not that I have a thing against movies about the mentally challenged. Far from it. I just happen to know that there are mentally challenged actors out there who could fill these parts (or at least the good ones) with a degree of reality and authenticity that might actually embody the noble intentions with which these films are ostensibly made. Some audiences are shocked by the Farrelly Bothers' brazen humor involving disabled actors, but the Farrellys treat the subject with the same matter-of-factness with which the disabled go about their daily lives.
And now we have Rosie O'Donnell. Sweet Jesus, what the hell is going on with this woman? After Taboo, her Broadway bomb with Boy George and the crash of her eponymous magazine, she tries to reedem herself by going retarded in Riding The Bus With My Sister. And get this - she plays Andie McDowell's sister, which is about as believable as Ava Gardner as Lorne Greene's daughter in Earthquake ("GODDAAAAMIIIIT!!!")
Steven Soderbergh, if you're reading this, get Andie some real work. She was amazing in sex, lies, and videotape. Her Revlon ads are better than her flicks these days. Groundhog Day was awesome, but she hasn't been in anything truly great since Short Cuts.
But I digress.
B-Side at tvgasm.com put together a collage of clips from this movie, and you owe it to yourself to experience the dichotomy of sidesplitting laughter and abject revulsion that will accompany any viewing of this clip. Not only does Rosie play the lovable retard, but they throw in toilet humor, medical crisis, lots of yelling, screaming, crying, and of course embrassed "regular" people that look at each other and smile and shrug as Rosie screams her head off about marshmallows and falling off the crapper.
There's a lot of great television on these days. It really is a golden age for TV drama, thanks to cable. But garbage like this, while funny as hell, makes me wanna rip my hair out at the root. And guess who's responsible? This is was directed by none other than Anjelica Huston!
Links:
http://www.tvgasm.com/archives/television_specials/000761.php
http://www.cbs.com/specials/riding_the_bus_with_my_sister/
Photo: somebody at cbs.com.
She is on the B-list? I thought she would be much lower than that! ;)
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