Review of State and Main (2000) by Shaun F — 12 Feb 2004

[size=3]Acclaimed playwright and screenwriter David Mamet directs this satire about a Hollywood production that swoops into a small-town for a few days to shoot several important scenes for their film. [i]State and Main [/i]has the usual trademarks of a film written by Mamet: frequently profane dialogue, characters that make points using perverse yet effective logic, and a generally biting tone that spares no one. Mamet's wonderful writing is what made [i]Glengarry Glen Ross [/i]both hilarious and heartbreakingly poignant. Unfortunately, he seems to have fallen in love with his own voice in this movie...and the result is a film that occasionally sparkles with wit but too often settles for a joke that is simply not funny. There comes a point in this film when it is obvious that the characters are just mouthpieces for Mamet's supposedly clever dialogue, rather than fully developed human beings. The wonderful cast (which includes all-stars like Philip Seymour Hoffman, David Paymer, William H. Macy and Alec Baldwin) do their best to generate laughs, and to a certain degree, they succeed. Hoffman, cast for once as a romantic lead, is effortlessly charming as the bumbling screenwriter who is constantly being ignored by the film's production staff. And Baldwin is a delight as a spoiled movie star (perhaps not unlike the actor himself) who can not help but get into trouble wherever he goes. Yet there is still the feeling that [i]State and Main [/i]isn't saying anything particularly new about the filmmaking business. This material has been covered more perceptively, and consequently with much funnier results, in films like [i]Day for Night [/i]and [i]The Player[/i]. David Mamet clearly has contempt for the Hollywood mentality, but he has not been able to successfully channel that contempt into a truly biting comedy. The film is inoffensive and will generate a few laughs, which I suppose makes it a decent comedy. Yet one can not shake the sense that Mamet and his actors could have achieved a lot more.[/size].

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