Full Circle: The Powder Blue Review You've Been Waiting For

As I've told you twice before, Powder Blue is a little movie that could starring Jessica Biel, Forest Whitaker, Ray Liotta, Patrick Swayze, Lisa Kudrow and Eddie Redmayne. The trailer, which can be found here, first became famous because it was just music and pictures, with no attempt to reveal a plot or, more important, words. The movie quickly became more famous because Jessica Biel plays a stripper in it. Despite the fact she's posed semi-nude before, there were rumors on the internets that she would not be nude in the film. Don't worry eager readers, she is. Not fully (no vajj) but you do see full breasts and booty (now that I've told you this happy Google hunting). I was excited for Powder Blue because I can spot a stinker from a mile away, and I was hoping to beat the rush for a front-row seat to what was sure to be a Razzie leader next year. However, since the movie was released direct-to-DVD, my hopes may be dashed. From the outset the movie seemed filled to the brim with cliches and trying desperately to copy off of better, more original movie concepts (cough *Crash* cough). It was released on DVD May 26th, and I watched it the following day.

Here are the character profiles. Please have a bucket ready for when you barf. Ray Liotta, in full tattooed glory, has just been released from prison after several decades and is searching for a new beginning, as evidenced by his pseudo-baptism in the Pacific. He knows he has a child, and begins searching for his former wife, who he learns has just recently died. Forest Whitaker, in what I have counted to be his third Crash-type of movie (The Air I Breathe, Vantage Point), is actually my pick for the worst actor of the film (worse than JB... barely). His character is introduced to the audience as a wreck of a human, as he is so depressed that he has taken his savings out of the bank and drives around looking for prostitutes and then asks him/her to shoot and kill him. Needless to say he does not have many friends, except for a friendly waitress at a diner he cries at, Lisa Kudrow, who is so oblivious to his painfully obvious condition that she just babbles at him (and gives him free pie!). One night Forest runs into Eddie Redmayne, a funeral home operator who is going deeply into debt, but even so does not take up Forest's surely legal offer.

This brings us to the star, Ms. Jessica Biel. She plays Rose-Johnny, a stripper in a club called Wild Velvet (owned by Patrick Swayze- who is doing his best visual and audio Bret Michaels) named Scarlet (poetic justice). She lives with her dog in what appears to be a hotel room, until the dog escapes (smart), and then we find out she's also addicted to coke and has a terminally ill son who can't be more than four. That's what we call the trifecta. To clarify: she's stripping for her dying son's medical payments, but she's broke and depressed so she uses coke, which makes her more depressed and broke. Aaand scene.

Through movie gods' twisted fate, Ray Liotta comes and sees Jessica perform. What looked in the trailer like she was pouring water on herself is actually wax, which adds a disgusting element to her already pathetically sad dances. He hires Jessica for a private dance after some innocent conversations, where she tries to ride him and he "just wants to talk" (she replies something so fitting I almost cheered in delight "Men don't pay me to talk". Art imitating life). To absolutely no one's surprise Jessica is Ray Liotta's daughter, and conveniently enough he's terminally ill as well. After she discovers this she tries to quit, but Patrick Swayze, while he's getting a blow jay from another dancer (natch) tells her she can't quit because "when you dance I get a rock hard boner". And throughout all this stripping-father- related drama, her son is still dying on a hospital bed with nary a mother to be found.

Because the long version is to depressing to enumerate, the short version is: Eddie Redmayne (the funeral home guy) has JB's dog, and when he returns it to her they immediately hug even though they are total strangers and fall into bed together. While this is happening her son dies and no one can reach her, though somehow Ray Liotta finds out that he has a grandson, pays for his treatment and buys her two tickets to Paris before dying, in snow (in LA!) that looks like blue rock candy crystals (thus the title... Powder Blue). Forest Whitaker and Lisa Kudrow make out in his car after that delicious free pie (known to cure all suicidal thoughts) and then we find out the reason he's so incredibly depressed is because his wife died on their wedding day, leaving the ceremony, with him in the driver's seat. He offers a transsexual fifty grand to kill him, gets robbed, finds the transsexual, retrieves the money and accidentally kills the transsexual in the process. But there's a happy ending for him as he and Kudrow hook up on Christmas, when the movie takes place (sorry, I forgot). The movie ends with Biel and Redmayne at a bus station, meeting each other for the first time since she abruptly left his house post-hookup and her son died, saying "I've got two tickets to Paris."

This movie could have been fabulously bad in that I would have enjoyed it if a few tweaks had been made. Instead, the movie's absolutely atrocious and not only makes the viewer depressed for having seen it, but also that someone was messed up enough to create these characters. 1. Forest Whitaker should not have been in this movie. I was never a fan of him winning for "Last King of Scotland", and post-win he's made many, many bad choices, including this. He overacts to an unparalleled degree of anyone I've seen in most of the film. It doesn't help that his character's so pathetic he can't even kill himself, but his acting is the nail in the coffin, so to speak. 2. More Swayze! Patrick seemed to understand quickly that this film would be a disaster, and it showed. He was clearly having fun, and the aforementioned erection line was a movie highlight. 3. More stripping, fewer depressing songs. JB at one point dances to a song by Cat Power, who I absolutely love but who would never cross my mind as a stripping songstress. She has a beautiful and mournful voice, not something that would turn on a gentleman of leisure. The director clearly knew what he was doing during the stripping sequences as there would be slow pans of JB's body, especially her butt. Basically, if the movie just focused more on JB's horrible acting and great body it would have been exponentially better. Reboot in ten years? (fingers crossed)

Images found on Google.