Jimmy Zoole (Steve Guttenberg, also making his directing debut) has been having bad, bad day. Not only has his one-man version of Hamlet (performed with hand puppets) just tanked, his girlfriend has left him, his cat is gravely ill, and his unfinished novel has been stolen. Plus, it's New Year's Eve. So when Jimmy finds Eddie (Lombardo Boyar), a gay burglar, lurking in his apartment, he isn't exactly thrilled. On the verge of a major breakdown, he ties up Eddie and uses him as an outlet for his
multitude of frustrations. Eddie, it turns out, has a few of his own, including an ex-wife who won't let him see his child. What follows is a New Year's celebration replete with party hats, rope, and some very, very deep emotional issues. Based on James Kirkwood's cult novel (Kirkwood also won a Pulitzer as the author of A Chorus Line), P.S. Your Cat is Dead was screened at the 2002 Philadelaphia Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, Rovi
[The Boys in the Band] is much wittier and funnier than the comparatively frantic and frenzied shouting matches devised by Messrs. Guttenberg, Korn and Kirkwood.
It is, inevitably, an actorly exercise -- not off-puttingly so, perhaps, but at no time do we have a sense that we've transcended the stage. Or, for that matter, 1970.
The performances are solid, but as a screenwriter, Guttenberg can't make the situation seem like more than a theatrical construct in a contemporary setting.
In 1975, the idea of a straight man tying up a gay burglar was exotic, darkly humorous and sexually charged. In director/star Steve Guttenberg's new film version, it comes off as no big deal.
A two-character roundelay whose modicum of enjoyment depends largely on your own personal appetite for social commentary transparently dressed up as assertively quirky entertainment.
Dominated by an unshaven Guttenberg mugging, ranting, screaming and hurling himself around the luxurious loft set we're meant to believe is a squalid dump that serves as a nagging reminder to Jimmy of his inadequacies.
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