Full Frontal (film)

Template:Short descriptionTemplate:No plot Template:Use American English Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox film Full Frontal is a 2002 American comedy-drama film by Steven Soderbergh about a day in the life of a handful of characters in Hollywood. It stars Catherine Keener, Blair Underwood, David Duchovny, Julia Roberts, Mary McCormack, Nicky Katt, Brad Pitt, and David Hyde Pierce. The film was shot on digital video using the Canon XL-1s in under a month. The film blurs the line between what is real and what is fiction in its depiction of a film within a film (and possibly within another).

Production

The film was announced in 2001 and Catherine Keener was the first actor attached to the project, named How to Survive a Hotel Room Fire.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> It was billed by Miramax as "an unofficial sequel of sorts" to Sex, Lies, and Videotape.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In October, Julia Roberts, David Hyde Pierce, and David Duchovny were announced as leads in the project, and after the September 11 attacks, the film title was changed to The Art of Negotiating a Turn.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

After a phone call with Harvey Weinstein due to him disliking the new title, Soderbergh suggested the title Full Frontal.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Production on the film began on November 6, 2001.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

The character named Harvey (played by Jeff Garlin) is a reference to Weinstein himself.<ref name="marquee">Template:Cite web</ref>

Release

Box office

Full Frontal had a limited release in the United States on August 2, 2002, opening in 208 theaters, and earning $739,834 its first weekend.<ref name="Mojo"/> The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2003, and failed to reach the Top 10.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Critical response

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 39% based on reviews from 145 critics. The site's consensus reads: "An Template:Sic confusing movie made worse by the poor camera work."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Template:MC film

Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert called Full Frontal "a film so amateurish that only the professionalism of some of the actors makes it watchable".<ref name= "Ebert">Template:Cite news</ref> Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "When a set of pre-shooting guidelines a director came up with for his actors turns out to be cleverer, better written and of considerable more interest than the finished film, that's a bad sign. A very bad sign."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Other critics praised Soderbergh for his experimental approach.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post gave an overall positive review, but wrote, "Full Frontal is a movie about people making movies about movies, and Soderbergh edits so quickly and effortlessly between those layers of reality that a concentrically ordered universe similar to nesting Russian dolls quickly begins to feel more like a hall of mirrors. Watching Full Frontal is a vertiginous, disorienting experience, one that reflects its characters with grotesque, funny and sometimes horrifying exaggeration. No matter how much fun it is to watch – and for hard-core movie fans, it is often enormous fun – there's a certain relief when it stops and we're popped back out to our banal, one-track lives."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, recommending it for its "humor and talented cast".<ref name= "USA Today">Template:Cite news</ref>

Retrospective reviews

In 2016, Lawrence Garcia wrote in an essay for Mubi that the film’s amateurish filming techniques were precisely Soderbergh’s point, saying Full Frontal "is a film about aesthetics, or more specifically the phoniness of it; that is, it’s concerned mainly with the gulf between an object, its presentation, and interpretation, with the L.A. lifestyle (which includes a neighbor that perpetually wears a Dracula costume) providing the perfect backdrop."<ref name=mubi>Template:Cite web</ref> Garcia did say the film’s "major flaw is that while individual scenes are often amusing, the film as a whole never quite coheres."<ref name="mubi" />

For the 20th anniversary of the film, writer Craig J. Clark noted "the parallels between [the behavior of the character Gus]…and the accusations leveled at executive producer Harvey Weinstein, one of the handful of sexual predators ensnared by the #MeToo movement whose punishment appears to be sticking. What makes the film especially curious as a cultural artifact is Gus is not its only Weinstein stand-in", referring to Garlin’s character, as well.<ref name="marquee" />

References

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External links

• [https://www.imdb.com/{{#if: 0290212

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• Full Frontal at Rotten Tomatoes
• Full Frontal at Box Office Mojo