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‘YOU HURT MY FEELINGS’: A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

As a dyed-in-the-wool fan of Nicole Holofcener’s work I enjoy spending time in the world she creates and the characters who populate it. I may not be the most reliable person to assess her new feature, which reunites her with Julia Louis-Dreyfus (with whom she worked so well on Enough Said).

That’s not to say that a newcomer can’t or won’t find You Hurt My Feelings amusing. It’s just that I find myself smiling at the actors’ entrances, before they’ve said or done anything. You might say I’m pre-conditioned. We meet Louis-Dreyfus as she carries a box of donuts into a store in Manhattan and I’m already having a good time. Tobias Menzies plays her husband, a therapist whose first clients of the day are unhappily married David Cross and Amber Tamblyn. The stage is set for low-key, observational humor with a decidedly New York flavor. (“Do we have any bagels?” is not a line one would likely hear in a screenplay set anywhere else. It is spoken here in frustration by the principal couple’s grown-up son.)

A New Yorker through-and-through, Holofcener doesn’t feel the need to show us any landmarks or promote any particular stores or restaurants. We know where we are in the big geographic picture.

The ensemble supporting Louis-Dreyfus and Menzies is solid and savvy. Michaela Watkins, Owen Teague, and especially Jeannie Berlin bring so much to their parts as best friend, son, and mother, respectively, that you wonder who else could have possibly filled those roles.

You Hurt My Feelings is built on an almost Seinfeld-ish premise, but Holofcener takes this wisp of an idea and creates a likable framework around it with her actors. It’s fun to watch, and if your life hasn’t been significantly altered, at least you have spent 93 minutes in a compatible environment that’s distinctive and appealing. I had a good time.

Leonard Maltin is one of the world’s most respected film critics and historians. He is best known for his widely-used reference work Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide and its companion volume Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide, now in its third edition, as well as his thirty-year run on television’s Entertainment Tonight. He teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and appears regularly on Reelz Channel and Turner Classic Movies. His books include The 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons, The Great Movie Comedians, The Disney Films, The Art of the Cinematographer, Movie Comedy Teams, The Great American Broadcast, and Leonard Maltin’s Movie Encyclopedia. He served two terms as President of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, is a voting member of the National Film Registry, and was appointed by the Librarian of Congress to sit on the Board of Directors of the National Film Preservation Foundation. He hosted and co-produced the popular Walt Disney Treasures DVD series and has appeared on innumerable television programs and documentaries. He has been the recipient of awards from the American Society of Cinematographers, the Telluride Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, and San Diego’s Comic-Con International. Perhaps the pinnacle of his career was his appearance in a now-classic episode of South Park. (Or was it Carmela consulting his Movie Guide on an episode of The Sopranos?) He holds court at leonardmaltin.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook; you can also listen to him on his weekly podcast: Maltin on Movies. — [Artwork by Drew Friedman]

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