Get Well Soon

D: Justin McCarthy; with Vincent Gallo, Courteney Cox, Jeffrey Tambor, Tate Donovan, Anne Meara.

Narrative Feature Special Screenings, Regional Premiere

The SXSW programmer introduced the film with the usual promotional spiel, calling Get Well Soon “a great film,” to which co-star Jeffrey Tambor, also in attendance, corrected with his patented dry wit: “Citizen Kane was a great film.” The Saturday afternoon show was the first time Tambor had seen the final cut, prefacing the screening with “if you hear someone groaning, that will be me.” If he was groaning, nobody heard him over the laughter at this mostly charming, definitely weird (maybe not weird enough) indie film. Gallo plays the self-created Bobby Bishop, a late-night talk show host who suffers a nervous breakdown on air, then flees to New York to find the girl he left behind (Cox). He picks up clues to her whereabouts from his fawning PR man (Tambor), her closeted boyfriend (Donovan), her institutionalized brother and his nuthouse cronies, and her not-all-there mom (Meara), who’s been moonlighting as a streetwalker as of late. Gallo at first seems like an ill fit for what is basically a romantic comedy, but his strung-out, drowned-rat panache actually puts a fresh spin on what could have been moldy leading-man material. A bland and screechy Cox, however, does nothing to improve upon her underwritten role. Still, the jokes are frequent and funny, and pop culture junkies will get a sick kick out of watching Cox swap spit with Donovan, the ex-fiancé of Cox’s Friends co-star, Jennifer Aniston. (3/14, Arbor, 6:15pm)

This article appears in March 15 • 2002.

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A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...