Gray Matters
I believe, in general, that almost anything can be funny. In the right hands, even the most serious, dramatic, emotional themes can be given just the proper twist to make them either darkly humorous or slapstick silly. Of course, the opposite is also true – the funniest set-up in the world can fail to elicit even the slightest chuckle if mishandled. In a miraculous case of spectacular suckitude, Gray Matters manages to do both. If I wasn’t still queasy from watching the movie, I might be impressed at the accomplishment.
Okay, here’s the one sentence set-up:
Brother and sister find themselves both attracted to the same person.
Alrighty then. Where can we see this going? Perhaps a little dramedy – mostly serious with some humor and some pathos and some quirky supporting characters. Or maybe over-the-top and campy – with sight gags and mistaken identities and plenty of bawdy humor. Straight-up drama even – affairs of the heart mixed with families of origin can be a messy, emotional business. There are undoubtedly hundreds of plausible ways to successfully play out this scenario, even making it funny, and Gray Matters uses a grand total of zero of them. The film has no idea what it wants to be and as a result, it’s a ridiculous mess.
Let’s just count this off one bit of crap at a time. If I try to take it all on at once, I’m afraid the crapitude might be overwhelming. For me, I mean – I can’t handle reliving this thing all at once.
1. Sam (Tom Cavanagh) and Gray (Heather Graham) are siblings. Single, they share an apartment, do everything together and are for all appearances a couple. Say it with me people – ew. Even after they are mistaken for a couple, are momentarily grossed out and decide they need to date more (I mean date other people) the foul taste of implied incest remains in the mouth of the viewer throughout the movie. They never stop seeming like a couple. Yuck. This is a poor choice on the part of screenwriter and director Sue Kramer. If she was going to go with incest-that-isn’t-incest as a humor vehicle, she needed to have the instances where the two look like a couple to outsiders be misunderstandings. Instead, they just seem like a couple. All the time. Ew and yuck.
2. Heather Graham is horribly miscast. And she is terrible at portraying Gray. Her character is also appallingly badly written. Three strikes, Heather, you’re out. Gray is supposed to be going through an epiphany here as she finds herself attracted to Sam’s new girlfriend, yet all she does is act stupid and fall down. She’s a complete ditz, the kind that makes you cringe instead of laugh. The physical awkwardness that is supposed to be endearing is completely at odds with her ability to ballroom dance, making it just an obvious gimmick. She’s horribly neurotic and even in therapy she has no insight whatsoever into herself or anyone else. It’s as though she is too stupid to live her own life. She also makes grand life decisions in the blink of an eye. She’s an idiot. Graham just can’t pull off this character (I’m not sure anyone could, but certainly someone else could do it better). She has no dramatic presence for the scenes that require it; she has no comic timing for the scenes that require that and all the physical humor looks forced and unnatural. I don’t like Gray, I don’t feel for her dilemmas, I don’t care how things turn out for her. I don’t think that’s what most filmmakers are going for with their lead actor/character.
3. Bridget Moynahan plays the love interest. Her seductive attitude with both siblings is like the incest inferences – she supposedly doesn’t know she’s doing it. But how can she not know? A toad would know. Once again, a character with absolutely no insight into her own actions or motivations. Moynahan doesn’t do a bad job, but given what she has to work with, that isn’t exactly high praise.
4. Tom Cavanagh. Oh dear. Okay, he isn’t as offensive as the other two. But like the others, Sam is wildly inconsistent in attitude and action. His character does things to further the plot that make little sense given what we know of his general nature. He’s mostly there to provide a foil for Heather Graham, who is so bad that she stinks up everyone around her. Cavanaugh’s burden is one of guilt by association. How can he possibly end up looking good when his character must interact with the complete disaster that is “Gray”? Answer, he can’t. He’s cute, but he’s no match for this level of suckage.
5. The screenplay. This is where the real blame lies (well, except for Heather Graham being crappy, she’s to blame for that). No group of actors, no director even, can make a decent movie from a disastrously assembled mess of a screenplay. This movie has no idea what to be or where to go. One minute it’s sight gags, the very next scene is a pivotal emotional outpouring. Gray is supposed to be hopelessly confused and generally miserable, but still wacky and fun and cute. Everything about Gray Matters is like this – it’s all out of place, unformed and simply does not come together from scene to scene. There’s a basic incompatibility between what we’re told and shown and what lies beneath the surface. That’s what ultimately kills this movie. When the text and subtext feel like they are from different films, there’s no way to come back from that.
In a grander scheme, it’s too bad that Gray Matters is so badly mishandled. The true theme of an adult questioning and reassessing her sexuality is one that deserves attention. Be it a comedic or dramatic treatment, real people go through this and the subject is relevant. Because something is “just a movie” does not mean that it automatically shirks all responsibility for doing some justice to its subject matter. Most of the time a bad movie is just a bad movie. Gray Matters is one of those instances where a crap screenplay and a bad lead actress turn an opportunity to enlighten into nothing more than a mish-mash of bad scenes. If I were in a more cynical mood (yes, I do actually get more cynical than this – it isn’t pretty) I would say that Gray Matters is nothing more than a loose series of random excuses for the filmmakers to dangle the possibility of a lesbian love scene. And that, like everything about Gray Matters, is just pathetic. Avoid this dreck, it isn’t worth your time or money.
A far, far, FAR better film along the same thematic lines is Kissing Jessica Stein. That one I heartily recommend.
