Review of Shadowboxer (2005) by Kristin P — 27 Nov 2006

Unbelievable. No other film delivers such inconceivable fun--just when you think things are at their most ridiculous, then hardened hit-woman Helen Mirin does a strip-tease for Cuba Gooding, Jr (who plays her hardened, hit-man stepson).

Then she Mirin and Gooding have sex on a picnic blanket in the woods amidst a flurry of flower petals and hazy, over-bright sunlight. Mo'Nique plays the dope-addicted lover of teeny, tiny Joseph Gordon-Levitt (a chain-smoking, womanizing mob doctor) and practically smothers him with her giant boobs.

Macy Gray, packed into spandex and fake fur, incoherently babbles and wobbles and does--well, whatever, it doesn't matter, she's amazing just standing there (which she barely manages to do). Some of the scenes are so perfectly cliche you almost want to take the film at face value--and I almost did upon first viewing--but the parody is too perfect, and too ridiculous, and too, too funny to be honest.

(And the director, when speaking to the Toronto Film Festival audience, refused to let them in on the joke, which made it funnier.) Brilliant, brilliant whatever-it-is...perhaps I'd best call it a sly, close-mouthed parody of Hollywood big-budget thrillers (complete with several repetitions of the classic "hit man job hand-off scene": a wide shot of our hit (wo)men meeting up with the mysterious "boss" guy, who waits for them in a wheelchair parked at the edge the water (a dock? a lake?), who hands over the secret kill orders orders in big brown envelopes while staring calmly out across the misty lake).

Helen Mirin deserves a hug, a kiss, and an award for being both of and above what's going on here; she manages to be sexy, brilliant and charming even as she's being a ridiculous cardboard cutout parody.

Clever, hilarious, and extra funny since Gooding doesn't seem to realize he's not in a "real" thriller. How did he read the script and miss that one? My theory, and why this film's so fun, is that Hollywood film actually IS this bad.

..its brilliance as parody is that it's completely, utterly ridiculous, and yet it's close enough to the real stuff of Hollywood that we believe it might actually be...real? No. Anyone taking this film at face value is missing the entire film.