Acclaimed monologuist Spalding Gray recounts his latest neurotic exploits after he experiences blurriness in one eye. Diagnosed with a rare ocular disease, drooping eye -- and refusing, on quasi-religious grounds, to submit to conventional surgery -- Gray obsessively seeks out an array of alternative natural therapies, including: a Native American sweat ceremony; a raw vegetarian diet; and a visit to a Filipino doctor known as the Elvis Presley of psychic surgeons.
A chatty, colorful, nicely sardonic account of how a crisis led Mr. Gray to assess his medical state, consider his mortality and take one more funny, self-dramatizing look at the eccentric world around him.
At best, Gray is a tragicomic Everyman who strikes an empathic chord in his admiring audience; at worst, he's a middle-aged, self-absorbed, hopelessly provincial New Yorker -- an urban hick who won't shut up.
Using every cinematic trick in the book, [director] Soderbergh turns Gray's one-man world into the most surreal mind-expander since Alice fell down the rabbit hole.
Not only is it interesting to follow the course of Gray's storyline, the movie is also equally interesting to view, even if the storyteller is just sitting in front of a desk most of the time.
In spite of Soderbergh and the painful lack of an audience/laugh track, Gray's story is immediately compelling, proving that once again, a talking head can truly entertain an audience.
Soderbergh is a gifted director (SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE; KING OF THE HILL); Gray is a gifted monologist (SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA). They're just not a very good match for the creation of a film.
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