The Garden of the Blind

For Christmas, I kind of went crazy buying videos. I went through the discount bins looking for DVDs that would be okay to watch, pulling some classics as well as some mildly entertaining films. I even grabbed some that I had never seen before, in the hopes that they would be as good as I had heard they would be. One such film was Steve Martin’s brainchild L.A. Story.

I had heard that this was a good movie that hadn’t been well received at the box office. Since I'm a Steve Martin fan and (to my surprise) the movie was not rated R, this was an easy choice during my spree. However, with busy schedules and a lot of movies to choose from, it remained shelved for quite a while before we got around to watching it (although it beat out Spider-Man, The Fugitive, and Mission: Impossible).

(Why do I tell that story? Probably because I like to read my own writing. On to the review!)

Steve Martin (who also wrote the movie) plays an L.A. weatherman who doesn’t seem to care much about the weather. His forecasts are silly improvisations that don’t seem to have anything to do with what the weather might actually do. He is also dating a woman who drives him nuts. Why is he with her? So that he can break up with her, and we’re happy for him when he finally does.

Into his life falls an eclectic British journalist (played by his then wife, Victoria Tennant) and a flighty young clothing store employee (played by a vivacious Sarah Jessica Parker). He struggles through a midlife crisis and relationships with the three women, all against the backdrop of the L.A. culture, which is parodied in little bits of comedy that are inserted at fairly random points of the movie.

Oh, and let’s not forget the oracular road sign. It’s a highway sign used to indicate road conditions (we just had a bunch of similar signs installed all over Utah not too long ago) that starts giving Steve Martin’s character advice and making vague prophesies about his future.

I walked away from this film with some mixed feelings. I thought that bits of it were hilarious, and that the whole thing was very impressive. While much of the film is a serious drama about a man’s mid-life crisis, it never loses its touch of zany, light-hearted whimsy. It’s like reading one of his books, but with a serious, almost mystical story intertwined, all set to Enya music.

My biggest complaint with the movie is that it is rather racy at points. The exuberant SanDeE* is like a radiant flower, practically begging everything that comes along to stop by and pollinate her. Even with her libidinous flirtation, most of the rest of the content is fairly innocent. Whenever people have sex, they talk about it, but the event itself is skipped over entirely. We only ever see the first kiss (we do hear the sounds a couple of times, but it’s muffled coming from the next room). Even the language is innocent enough. Most of the time there’s no swearing, but when someone does drop the bomb, it’s more a terrible faux pas than anything deliberately offensive.

In summary, while I wouldn’t show it to any kids, this was the best movie about weathermen who talk to road signs that I’ve ever seen.