She’s Funny That Way
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Talent: Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson, Jennifer Aniston, Rhys Ifans
Release Date: 26th June 2015
What happened to Peter Bogdanovich? The first-time director who in 1971 delivered one of the most poignant coming-of-age visions of small town America ever committed to celluloid in The Last Picture Show has in 2015 capitulated into bourgeois, Manhattanite farce with this achingly mild comedy about stardom, infidelity and Broadway that aims right at the middlebrow and scores a palpable hit, right between the Cameron Crowe and the Woody Allen. She’s Funny That Way is a totally passable, all too familiar tale of starlet Isabella (Poots) landing her first acting role in the midst of love triangles, lies and humorous coincidences that betray ultimately a lack of faith in humanity, but a wide-eyed abundance of faith in miracles and show business. It’s sad to watch Bogdanovich, who once bore witness to the darkness at the heart of the lie of the American Dream, proselytise for it with a cast of Hollywood jobbers, now ironically a victim of the wider tragedy he has tried so strenuously since to ignore or forget.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
