Review of Enough Said (2013) by V H — 17 Nov 2013

Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is a divorced massage therapist whose only child is about to go away to college. Albert (James Gandolfini) is also divorced with a daughter headed off to college. After the two meet at a party, Albert gets Eva's number through a mutual friend. Eva reluctantly agrees to have dinner with him - "reluctantly" because she doesn't find him physically attractive, in large part because he's ...well...large.

Eva and Albert have a great first date. Conversation flows. They laugh. They "connect". A date or two later and Albert's girth is no longer an issue. They enter that happy stage of early couplehood during which quirks that will someday be deemed terribly annoying are still considered charming.

At the very same party where Eva meets Albert, she also meets a professional poet named Marianne (Catherine Keener). When Marianne learns that Eva is a massage therapist, she asks for her card. Soon she's one of Eva's regular clients and from there, a friendship blossoms.

Though she's generally a very nice person, Marianne regularly bashes her ex-husband in conversation. After many sessions of listening to what an asshole he is, Eva eventually deduces that Marianne's ex is none other than Albert. But rather than reacting by saying "Oh my god, that's the guy I've been dating" like any normal person would do, Eva chooses to keep her discovery a secret, presumably so she can preemptively learn all Albert's flaws through Marianne's bitching rather than having to wait to discover them over the course of their relationship.

This sort of plot - where if one person would just say something, all of their problems would simply evaporate - is more typical of really dumb comedies than of dramas. From my recollection, every single Flintstones episode hinged on this very concept. But rather than just telling the truth, we have Eva diving behind potted plants to avoid being caught in an act of deception that she had no reason to commit in the first place.

But this isn't the only thing that bugged me. There's also the far-fetched fact that even before Eva knew who Albert was, not once in all of her conversations with Marianne about her new boyfriend did she ever mention his name, nor did Marianne ask. Perhaps they're both big Romeo and Juliet fans and consider it irrelevant. "What's in a name?" and all that.

If you can overlook these basic plot contrivances (and the dumb title, though at least it's not "'Nuff Said"), this is actually a pretty good movie. Gandolfini is excellent, but I couldn't stop thinking about him being dead, which made the character of Albert seem even more sad than he would have otherwise, as if he, too, was about to die.

Speaking of Albert, one of his quirks which drives both Eva and Marianne crazy involves rotating his tortilla chips in the bowl of guacamole to try to push all of the onions, which he hates, off to one side. As a fellow anti-onionite, I think this is the film's most ridiculous contrivance of all. I don't care how much you rotate your chip, the onion and avocado molecules are bound so tightly that there's just no separating them. Believe me, I've tried.

Though this movie requires that we accept an otherwise smart woman acting incredibly dumb, it's so rare these days to have a romantic comedy starring actual grownups that I was temporarily willing to suspend disbelief.

Not with the ludicrous guacamole fallacy, mind you, but at least with the rest of the plot.