Word: stingings
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Even when Susan is not quite explicable or sympathetic, she is a compelling spectacle, turning heads and stomachs with her coruscating monologues. The others--her husband (Charles Dance), her bohemian pal (Tracey Ullman), her befuddled lover (Sting) and two of her husband's superiors in the diplomatic corps (John Gielgud and Ian McKellen)--have delicious verbal turns of their own. Among its other virtues, Plenty is the year's funniest film, to those with a taste for English mandarin scorn: the word unspoken, the sneer barely repressed, euphemism as an act of smart-club malice...
...fact that Streep and co-stars Sting and Tracey Ullman are able to break through the film's hard crust of mediocrity is a tribute to their collective talent and bravura. Brilliantly manipulating a spectrum of emotions from pastoral innocence to manic depression to pulsating sexuality, Streep may very well clinch the third Oscar of her career as the little--lost--activist. Once again, her most appealing characteristic is her chameleon-like control of facial expression. In one of the film's most fleeting but poignant moments (and probably the only one in which Baker's off-the-wall pacing...
Running a close second to Streep in talent are rock singers Tracey Ullman and Sting, proving that the movie musical is by no means the only avenue open to today's talented musical celebrities. As Susan's unlikely bohemian sidekick Alice, Ullman provides the film with some strongly needed comic relief. Her entrance on screen is a treasure; waltzing into the office decked out in a man's pinstriped suit, she silences her employer's huffy outburst at her appearance, by remarking "Imagine what my boyfriend's boss is saying right now." Hare balances Alice's bohemianism with Susan...
...short, despite some fine performances by Streep, Ullman and Sting, Plenty is the fall season's most bitter disappointment. Had Schepisi and Hare been willing to sacrifice the artsy elements in favour of a more straightforward, biographical format, Plenty would have been more than enough...
...bemused narratives about favorite Wobegonians, including Father Emil, who blesses animals on the lawn of Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Church; the Statue of the Unknown Norwegian, which sprouts grass from an unusual place; and Angler Dr. Nute, a retired dentist who tells the sunfish, "Open wide . . . This may sting a little...