Monday, December 17, 2012

Any Day Now





The schmaltzy, sudsy Alan Cumming vanity project "Any Day Now" has, to borrow a line from "The Golden Girls," more bad singing, bad dancing, and bad acting than a Suzanne Somers special. Cumming stars as Rudy Donatello, a drag queen in late-'70s West Hollywood who makes a beeline for Paul, a cute closet case (Garret Dillahunt) who musters the courage to walk into his bar one night. Paul's a recently divorced trial attorney with the D.A.'s office who finds the feisty and loquacious Rudy more appealing than you and I might.


Rudy's been living month-to-month in a seedy apartment with a junkie neighbor, who cranks her music up to snort cocaine and asks her 14-year-old son Marco, who has Down Syndrome, to stand outside in the hall when a man comes over to fuck her. Before you can blink, Rudy's moved in with Paul, along with Marco, whose mom, facing an extended prison term, grants them temporary custody - and not long after, they decide to try to adopt him. "Any Day Now" stacks the deck against them, with cold social workers, insinuating attorneys, and unsympathetic judges - then ends with laughable overkill as Marco (until then, all considered, a resourceful boy) dies alone under a bridge, trying to run away from his foster home back to Rudy and Paul, and Paul sends a letter to the boss who fired him, the opposing attorneys, the judges, telling them they have Marco's blood on their hands. This is followed by Cumming back on stage singing the title track in what amounts to industrial-strength bathos.

I've seen Cumming in comedy concert, where he can be hilarious, and I liked his quirky 2001 film "The Anniversary Party," in which Phoebe Cates had a great monologue: "Oh, God, you're so lucky you don't have kids. You can't stick your head in the oven. You can't take a handful of Percodan if you want to, or slit your wrists. Kids rob you of that option." That speech alone is better and truer than anything in the ham-fisted "Any Day Now."

No comments:

Post a Comment