My One and Only

Zellweger seeks man to care for her in 50s comedy

CHRIS NOTH and Renee Zellweger in “My One and Only.”

It’s quirky. It’s fun. It has interesting characters.
“My One and Only” is definitely worth 108 minutes of your time.
Wonderfully nostalgic, the film stars Renee Zellweger as an aging socialite in 1953, married to a womanizing band leader, played by Kevin Bacon.
Zellweger’s character is Anne Deveraux, a ditzy blond who spends her time traveling and relaxing. She returns home early to find her husband, Dan, in their bedroom with another woman.
She’s not surprised. She takes it in stride. She even helps the woman get her clothes on, remarking she looks like a tramp. “What am I saying,” she then says. “You are a tramp.”
She leaves hubby with sons George and Robbie in tow, played respectively by Logan Lerman and Mark Rendall.
They empty out hubby’s account, jewels and all, buy an expensive $3,000 vehicle and head out to Pittsburgh where the Zellweger character has an old friend. Everywhere she goes, she has an old friend.
The thought of actually working for a living is totally foreign to always smiling Anne. She lives in an age where beautiful women find a man to care for them.
A reoccurring theme in the movie is Anne and sons meet people who steal from them. She meets an old friend in Pittsburgh she thinks can help her financially. When he begs her for money over dinner, she excuses herself to go to the powder room. When she returns, the money in her purse is gone and the restaurant manager is only interested in getting the dinner tab paid.
Enter Chris North, playing a man in uniform who comes to her aid. They court and eventually become engaged. The North character gives young George a lecture on how there can only be one top dog in a family and he, not George, has that roll.
George replies with a bark but is able to plant a wedge that eventually breaks off the engagement.
George appears the most stable. Mom has no head for money or a sense of responsibility. When she decides to take her kids out of school to start their cross-country trek, she doesn’t even know where they go. Brother Robbie is very gay and vapid.
Anne keeps smiling through it all. When she tries to spark a relationship with a man in a bar, he turns out to be a house detective who charges the Zellweger character with prostitution.
When she tries to spark a relationship with an old flame, she discovers he has a new, younger girlfriend who remarks her mother has a dress like Zellweger’s. She asks if Anne can dance the Charleston.
Amongst the running jokes is Zellweger’s oldest son, played by Rendall, wants to be an actor. Each town they move to, he gets a part in the school play. But he never gets to perform in front of an audience. In once instance, they move before play night. In another, the play is about to start when it is announced a tornado has been spotted and everyone must exit to the school basement.
It’s hard to fathom all that happens to this trio, including Zellweger’s almost marriage to a hardware store owner and the surpise reason she doesn’t.
The kicker is this isn’t exactly fiction. George is telling the story and George really exists today. I won’t reveal his identity although a search on the Internet will get you the answer fairly quickly.
It would be more fun to go for the ride from New York to California with the Zellweger character and the two sons and learn his identity at the end of the film.
“My One and Only” is a wonderfully human, beautifully nostalgic piece of cinema. The film is truly a hoot!

MY ONE AND ONLY • Directed by Richard Loncraine • Written by Charlie Peters • Runtime: 108 minutes • Rated PG-13 for sexual content and language • 3 1/2 stars out of 4

Straw Dogs 1971

Violence flows in original ‘Straw Dogs’

ABC Pictures
IT'S THE CALM before the storm in the original “Straw Dogs” for Dustin Hoffman and Susan George.

If you frequented the drive-in theaters back around 1971, chances are you discovered “Straw Dogs.”
I think for the entire summer, it was the second feature at every theater. You could have “Bambi” followed by the Sam Peckinpah, violence-ridden “Straw Dogs.”
Peckinpah was a leader in realistic violence in films. Before him, people who were shot showed no blood. It’s as if they were shot and died of a heart attack.
Well, there was the union soldier who got his face blown off in “Gone With the Wind,” but that didn’t happen too often.
Peckinpah gave us spraying blood and great heaps of guts on walls behind where people were shot.
“Straw Dogs” has kitty cats hung, a sex-charged girl strangled and many others killed with guns, animal traps and more. It has rats running around. Baby, this film has everything. It was indeed a drive-in classic.
A “Straw Dogs” remake will be released next week, so you need to get out and see the original in preparation. I’ll be checking to make certain you do.
I did my duty and pulled out the $6 version I bought at Half Price Books. Now there is a Blu-Ray version with a DVD of extras. Prepare to pay more than $6.
Dustin Hoffman is a bookish, Clark Kent-cloned American living in a hard drinking English village with his mouth-watering wife, played by Linda George. She wears skirts the size of a washcloth and no bra. She gets two stars just for her appearance.
George’s character happens to be from that village and had a relationship with one of the burly louts there, played by Del Henney.
The Henney character and the other yokels spend most of their time in a pub and when not, working on the Hoffman character’s garage, putting on a new roof.
OK, they spend time there. Little work is done. Who can concentrate on work when the George character parades in front of her window topless?
Plus, time must be spent raiding her underwear drawer.
Little pranks are pulled and the yokels on the roof roar with laughter.
Even when the family cat is found strangled, the Hoffman character lets it role off his back.
Until things get REAL bad. Then it’s time to take action. You see, the patriarch of the yokels discovers his horny daughter has taken off with the town dullard (played by David Warner) and is missing. The Warner character, after accidentally killing the girl, is whacked by Hoffman’s car. Hoffman takes him to his home and all of the village cutthroats descend on the house to bring the killer out.
“Straw Dogs” is best known for its rape scene which engrosses and repels, along with its endless string of violence at the end.
The film is well executed and interesting. There is a sincere attempt to provide real characters, too. Hoffman’s character is a mathematician who received a grant to write a book. But with all of the violence and incidents leading to violence, the poor guy never gets anything done.
The new “Straw Dogs” moves the action to the deep South, rather than a charming English village.
We’ll see about the new version, but the old “Straw Dogs” holds up just fine, thank you.

STRAW DOGS 1971
• Directed by Sam Peckinpah
• Written by David Zelaq, with screenplay by Peckinpah
• Runtime: 118 minutes
• Rated R for lots of violence and sex, including rape
• 31⁄2 stars out of 4