William H. Macy has given a lot of great performances in a lot of great films. Absolutely none of that is apparent in this unfunny, self-absorbed, toothless and tiresome movie. The Deal makes Macy look like some talentless boob who won the lottery and decided to leave his job as an accountant and become a filmmaker. Teamed up with a starkly unattractive Meg Ryan, Macy has created a gigantic turd that should have been left in his toilet bowl and not flung at the public like an angry chimp.
The Deal is yet another entry into one of the most putrid genres of modern cinema, "the movie about making movies". It seems as though virtually every single person in Hollywood wants to make one of these films and virtually all of them suck ass. Even the best of these "movies about movies" are rarely more than inside jokes that most people don't get. Most of them are boring and self-indulgent. The worst are physically painful to sit through.
Charlie Berns (William H. Macy) is a movie producer so down on his luck he's about to kill himself. Unfortunately for the people watching The Deal, Charlie's suicide is interrupted by his nephew Lionel (Jason Ritter), who has a script about Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone that he wants Charlie to look at. In the first of many things in this story that make little to no sense, the script inspires Charlie to try and put together a deal to produce a 100 million dollar action flick starring megastar Bobby Mason (LL Cool J). Though he encounters some resistance from studio executive Deirdre Hearn (Meg Ryan), Charlie is able to pile up enough BS to get the project approved and rushed into production.
As filming begins, it becomes obvious that the movie is going to be a spectacular piece of garbage. Charlie, however, can only focus on trying to get into Deirdre's pants. When Bobby Mason is kidnapped by terrorists and the studio shuts down production, Deirdre and Charlie decide to take the leftover money and make a movie out of Lionel's original script, which had been bastardized beyond recognition to suit the meatheaded Mason's limitations. Can Deirdre and Charlie get this charming and classy film made before the studio figures out what they're up to?
I can honestly say that I didn't care a whit about anything or anyone in this story. I didn't care if they made the first crappy film or the second quality film. I didn't care if Charlie and Deirdre got together. I didn't care about them when they got together. And after they inevitably broke up, I didn't care if they got back together. I didn't care if Charlie had a hundred lit bottle rockets shoved up his butt. I didn't care if Deirdre was gang raped by a herd of rhinos. The characters in this film are neither real nor amusing. The plot is schizophrenic. The direction is pedestrian in the sense it tried to cross the street and got run over by a truck. The dialog is stunningly unfunny and most of the acting, especially by the two leads, is the sort of stuff that wouldn't even pass muster at a community theater in a small town of 200 people.
Macy seems to have tried to get through his entire performance using only two expressions. I wouldn't be surprised if I found out Meg Ryan was drunk in half her scenes. And in addition to her poor acting, Ryan just looks awful in this film. I don't know if it was bad make up, whatever she's done to her lips or if she's just been too thin for too long, but Ryan appears to have been ridden hard and put away wet. Ryan was a marvelously cute woman and had the sort of attractiveness that should have aged well. In The Deal, she only looks aged.
Let me give you a specific example of how terrible this movie is. After Charlie and Deirdre have their predictable onset fling, it's just as predictable they break up when filming is over. But things go past predictable and into lobotomized when Charlie and Deirdre have not one, not two but three goodbye scenes, one right after the other right after the other. Imagine if at the end of Star Wars that after the ceremony where Han and Luke received their medals, they held a second ceremony and gave them another pair of medals. That's what the ending of The Deal is like.
I didn't get a single moment or ounce of entertainment out of watching this film. If you want to see William H. Macy's bare behind, it does make two very brief appearances. Beyond that, you'd get more out of a screenful of static than you will out of viewing The Deal.
The Deal is yet another entry into one of the most putrid genres of modern cinema, "the movie about making movies". It seems as though virtually every single person in Hollywood wants to make one of these films and virtually all of them suck ass. Even the best of these "movies about movies" are rarely more than inside jokes that most people don't get. Most of them are boring and self-indulgent. The worst are physically painful to sit through.
Charlie Berns (William H. Macy) is a movie producer so down on his luck he's about to kill himself. Unfortunately for the people watching The Deal, Charlie's suicide is interrupted by his nephew Lionel (Jason Ritter), who has a script about Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone that he wants Charlie to look at. In the first of many things in this story that make little to no sense, the script inspires Charlie to try and put together a deal to produce a 100 million dollar action flick starring megastar Bobby Mason (LL Cool J). Though he encounters some resistance from studio executive Deirdre Hearn (Meg Ryan), Charlie is able to pile up enough BS to get the project approved and rushed into production.
As filming begins, it becomes obvious that the movie is going to be a spectacular piece of garbage. Charlie, however, can only focus on trying to get into Deirdre's pants. When Bobby Mason is kidnapped by terrorists and the studio shuts down production, Deirdre and Charlie decide to take the leftover money and make a movie out of Lionel's original script, which had been bastardized beyond recognition to suit the meatheaded Mason's limitations. Can Deirdre and Charlie get this charming and classy film made before the studio figures out what they're up to?
I can honestly say that I didn't care a whit about anything or anyone in this story. I didn't care if they made the first crappy film or the second quality film. I didn't care if Charlie and Deirdre got together. I didn't care about them when they got together. And after they inevitably broke up, I didn't care if they got back together. I didn't care if Charlie had a hundred lit bottle rockets shoved up his butt. I didn't care if Deirdre was gang raped by a herd of rhinos. The characters in this film are neither real nor amusing. The plot is schizophrenic. The direction is pedestrian in the sense it tried to cross the street and got run over by a truck. The dialog is stunningly unfunny and most of the acting, especially by the two leads, is the sort of stuff that wouldn't even pass muster at a community theater in a small town of 200 people.
Macy seems to have tried to get through his entire performance using only two expressions. I wouldn't be surprised if I found out Meg Ryan was drunk in half her scenes. And in addition to her poor acting, Ryan just looks awful in this film. I don't know if it was bad make up, whatever she's done to her lips or if she's just been too thin for too long, but Ryan appears to have been ridden hard and put away wet. Ryan was a marvelously cute woman and had the sort of attractiveness that should have aged well. In The Deal, she only looks aged.
Let me give you a specific example of how terrible this movie is. After Charlie and Deirdre have their predictable onset fling, it's just as predictable they break up when filming is over. But things go past predictable and into lobotomized when Charlie and Deirdre have not one, not two but three goodbye scenes, one right after the other right after the other. Imagine if at the end of Star Wars that after the ceremony where Han and Luke received their medals, they held a second ceremony and gave them another pair of medals. That's what the ending of The Deal is like.
I didn't get a single moment or ounce of entertainment out of watching this film. If you want to see William H. Macy's bare behind, it does make two very brief appearances. Beyond that, you'd get more out of a screenful of static than you will out of viewing The Deal.