Does anyone remember Marci X (2003)?

I’m posting more clips of the musical numbers because they really need to be seen to be believed.

I can’t believe someone dressed her like this less than twenty years ago.

i thought her career was killed because she's a poor choice in all her roles... locked into the stain of friends.

and came off as pretty unlikable... in roles she was meant to be liked. She has that je ne sais quoi to be a total cunt.

She likely could have done better being handed more high maintenance, bitchier roles and done quite well. . . if she had embraced that a bit earlier. But I suppose friends' typecasting, having odd looks and being so old when it ended, didn't give her much room to explore her niche.

Lisa Kudrow obviously had a deal with Paramount. They were much more common then and studios didn't feel the need to force actors into work (or using the actor if the deal didn't turn out well, like in this case).

She chose decent projects. Lucky Numbers was a Nora Ephron movie with John Travolta at a time where he was getting $20 mil and selling a shit ton of tickets to mediocre movies. This one was a Paul Rudnick script and Richard Benjamin had some hits doing broad comedy. Neither turned out well. Not her fault.

Marci X was released at a time before Rotten Tomatoes. I think it was shelved for three years because it sucked. It was dumped into the least amount of theaters Paramount could contractually release it in, no advertising money was put behind it either. Pretty sure they skipped opening day reviews too (which at the time, cost the studio money, which they didn't want to pay if they knew reviews would be awful).

Who needed a career when FRIENDS paid her $20 million a year for 5 seasons and millions more from reruns, DVDs, streaming?

Fuck career, hello easy paychecks.

I love Kudrow. I think Valerie Cherish is one of the greatest TV characters ever and she should’ve been nominated for Opposite of Sex. You can tell she knows it’s a dud though and isn’t giving it her all. I also don’t know how much excitement there is for a Lisa Kudrow musical.

For a while I wondered if the movie could’ve been salvaged by someone like Fran Drescher. But as it went on and the movie somehow kept getting worse, it was a total lost cause.

Kudrow, Rudnick, Benjamin, and Scott Rudin sounds like a surefire hit. But boy is it awful. I would be ripe for a camp reappraisal if it weren’t so unfortunately racist.

She was very good in The other woman

R6 Richard Benjamin had directed some god awful movies in the 90s. Not sure why he was put on this project. Then I looked up his credits and realized he had done MADE IN AMERICA w/ Whoopi and Ted Danson (plus Will Smith as the funny friend of Whoopi's daughter who steals the movie). They must have thought he had a deft hand for racial comedy. Not sure I agree.

I love Mermaids but I can’t say his direction blew me away.

She'll always be Michele Weinberger to me.

When I think hip-hop satire, I think Richard Benjamin. Wasn't this written by Paul Rudnik. He knows how to write jokes, but can't write a story to save his life. For Broadway fans, all four of the boyband boys went on to stage fame (including Matthew Morrison who went on to Glee) and Christine Baranski's son was none other than micro-gay Andrew Keenan-Bolger.

I saw a test screening about six or seven months before it was released and it was markedly different than the final cut. It was about a half hour longer and while I don't remember what all there, I do remember there were story threads that got cut. The end result was only better in that you got out of the theatre faster.

[quote]She’s miscast in the role and comes across too much of a California blonde to be a JAP-y New York socialite.

What is a JAP? Jewish something?

[quote]i thought her career was killed because she's a poor choice in all her roles... locked into the stain of friends. and came off as pretty unlikable... in roles she was meant to be liked. She has that je ne sais quoi to be a total cunt.

Which of her characters are meant to be liked, other than Michele? The Opposite Of Sex? It's been decades since I saw Clockwatchers and I can't remember much about Analyze This or the Nora Ephron movie. She was sad and damaged in Happy Endings and I wanted her to down in that fucking PS I Love You shite.

She was great in Happy Endings, R13. PS I Love You was another missed opportunity with a great cast that was painfully boring to get through.

R12, Jewish American Princess

[quote] Which of her characters are meant to be liked, other than Michele?

As exasperating as Valerie Cherish is, by the end, yeah, you actually came to like her a little.

I remember the first time I heard about this movie was on Aint It Cool News where the script got a *rave* review. Based on that, I'd been looking forward to seeing it. Then when the reviews of the final product came out, I never bothered to seek it out. Looking at the script review now, I wonder if the author just had really bad taste? Or if something got seriously lost in the translation to the screen? From what I can tell, literally none of the dialogue the author mentions in his review seems to have actually made it into the final cut of the movie.

It has its moments but didn't hold together as a film.

My favorite was making fun of the Lou Pearlman boybands. But I wonder if I saw it now I'd think it was homophobic.

Just cuz....

Comedies like this are hard to do and, yes, sometimes they do come across better in the written form. You miscast one person or get the wrong director and it's over.

Wayans was terrible in this, but I'm sure he felt stranded by the screenplay and director.