Zandalee

Just look at this fucking cast.  Nicolas Cage and Judge Reinhold (Beverly Hills Cop, Ruthless People) made a movie together?  And it’s like all sexy ‘n shit?  You know what, I think Judge Reinhold and anyone is an odd combination.  I get a kick out of the guy ‘cause he’s just such a goofy actor.  His delivery and mellow attitude have sprung forth some comedy gold.  But this ain’t no comedy.  This here is a poignant tale of love, life and soul searching or something like that.

Judge plays Thierry Martin, an ex poet/professor turned business executive.  He’s married to Zandalee, a dress shop owner.  Cage is Johnny Collins, a painter/free spirit.  Thierry and Zandalee’s marriage is on the rocks because Thierry decided to take over his dad’s communications business leaving him dead inside.  Johnny is an old friend and he and Zandalee have an affair.

First of all the way everyone looks and acts in this movie is a little off.  Judge sports a mustache and a bad New Orleans accent that drifts in and out.  Every once in a while he recites some poetry which gets really annoying because it seems like the filmmakers thought that if they had a guy say something that sounded meaningful then it would in turn make the film itself meaningful.  Well they certainly got that one wrong. 

Cage has a pretty wild look with nasty long hair and a weird goatee mustache thing happening.  He doesn’t have an accent even though he and Judge were supposed to have grown up in Baton Rouge together.  Part of Johnny’s shtick is that he represents the creativity that Thierry abandoned so there’s some jealousy there.  The other part of Johnny’s act is that he plays it cool and has an all knowing attitude that may hold the secret to true happiness or true freeness or some shit.

Zandalee (played by Erika Anderson (Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Child)) is uhh…a character…in this movie.  It’s weird that this picture was named after the least developed and least interesting person of the whole cast.  I guess what I can say about her is that she wants the old passionate and inspired Thierry back.  She says that they used to have sex all day long and now they don’t have sex at all.  So to satisfy her needs she hooks up with Johnny but I should make it clear that Johnny is the one that initiates the affair.  He could sense that Zandalee wasn’t happy and that she needed some good fuckin’ to let her spirit soar.

And this is the beef that I have with this movie.  I think it has a pretty shallow message and tries to add these other things in to make it seem deeper.  It’s saying that you can only be truly happy if you’re having sex even if it’s an affair with some other dude.  Just fuck somebody, anybody.  I understand that Thierry’s lost his fervor for writing poetry and has a job that he’s not that into and this leads to less sex.  But don’t he and Zandalee have other interests besides each other’s bodies?  Instead of trying to work their problems out rationally they’re confrontational and Zandalee tries to force sex upon Thierry.  And this is the same relationship that Zandalee has with Johnny except the roles are reversed.  Sure Johnny and Zandalee both want to have sex with each other but when Zandalee tries to pull away Johnny forces the issue and wants to keep the affair going.  They have zero interest in each other besides making whoopee.  Johnny tells her some mystical shit like “when I’m inside you I feel us at the edge of the universe travelling, exploring”.  This is what I imagine Nicolas Cage says to women in real life when he’s fucking them.  Anyway, there’s talk like that of setting the mind and body free but it’s just about having sex.  You’ll feel better, complete, content, etc if you just have sex.  Intellectuality doesn’t play a part in these relationships.

I’m not saying that you can’t have a relationship purely based on fucking but it’s gonna be pretty thin and unsustainable.  A marriage isn’t going to last because as soon as one person rescinds on the sex there’s going to be problems.  This might sound like an old fashioned romantic notion but I think being totally in love is more than the physical.  Of course that’s part of it but two people (or more, hey what you do is what you do) need to be connected emotionally and mentally.  It’s gonna get boring if sex is all there is.  So to me it makes these characters seem kinda stupid for wondering why they can’t just fuck forever without any troubles.

What’s really interesting though is that Reinhold produced this.  He’s only produced one other thing and that was a documentary that his wife directed about praying called Be Still.  But I wonder how much of a hand he had in this picture.  I guess he felt strongly that this fairly typical love affair movie needed to be made.  I like to think of this film as a peak into Judge Reinhold’s mind.  Maybe he just wanted to have onscreen sex with some chick or come pretty damn close to flashing his wiener.  Whatever it was he played a creative and decision making role. 

The last thing I want to mention is that there’s a great scene where Cage goes berserk and destroys his paintings.  He stabs the canvas with a putty knife and yells, “fucking die, die!”  He also dumps and rubs a whole can of paint on his body and face like he’s washing in it.  The scene is some classic Nic Cage.  He’s a little weird the whole movie (read: standard Cage when he’s calm) but only towards the end does he kick it into high gear.

This one is similar to Crimes of Passion where you have a couple that doesn’t know how to communicate and work things out and that the only solution to any emotional problem is to have sex, with anyone.  It’s pretty thrill-less also.  Cage and Reinhold being friends in this piece is a really tough sell.  I can’t imagine that the two spoke much during production and they probably have talked to each other since filming wrapped.  Cage is this super cool guy and Reinhold is this super dorky guy that go pretty funny together on screen.  So unless you can’t pass up the opportunity to see these two share an entire film together this one’s not worth your time.

Sex Scenes: Five.  It’s a light five though because all except one are very brief.  The one fully fleshed out scene is aggressive with Cage going at it hard.  Also, I should mention that Zandalee is naked for a lot of the movie, like totally naked.  When we’re first introduced to her almost immediately there’s a full frontal.  I think this is part of the shallowness of the film as if showing a lot of boobies would automatically make things sexy and edgy and therefore interesting.  But we all know that you need more than that for a picture to be thought provoking and exciting.  With this amount of nudity it did cross my mind that this could’ve been NC-17 and on IMDB it does list it as such.  But on Netdicks they have it as R.  So I’m not sure if there are two versions.   

After Sex Scenes: One and a half.  The half is more of a break in sex.  Johnny and Zandalee stop for a moment while he pours oil mixed with cocaine on her body and says that universe line.  It’s not shown that they go back to having sex after that but I think it’s implied.

Strange Cameos: Jesus are there are a lot in this one.  Singer Aaron Neville plays a tough looking bartender.

Steve Buscemi (Fargo, Armageddon) plays a thief that pops up three times and talks to Zandalee.  I have no idea what his purpose was in this film.  The only thing I can think of is that he’s one of those characters that’s rough and guff but he’s also unexpectedly wise and perceptive.  I’m really only basing that off of the third conversation he has with Zandalee where he says something like you should be careful what you wish for ‘cause it might come true.  I forgot to mention that there are some really cheesy lines like that in this one.

Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler) is a woman Johnny brings to Thierry’s for dinner one night.  Johnny ends up having sex with Zandalee in the laundry room right before dessert though.

Joe Pantoliano (The Fugitive, The Matrix) is Zandalee’s gay friend.  This is another character that seems superfluous.  Zandalee doesn’t share any new information with him that we should know about so I don’t get it.

Zach Galligan (Gremlins 1 and 2) plays an art dealer that looks over some of Johnny’s work.  He actually does have a purpose and it’s to point out that Johnny’s paintings were much better and full of passion when he was fucking Zandalee indicating that he was in love with her and now he’s an emotional mess.    

This is a pretty damn good trailer by the way: