Where writer-director Eric Schaeffer shoots himself in the foot is by succumbing to the narcissistic voice within.
Wirey Spindell (1999)
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Reviews Counted: 16
Fresh: 4
Rotten:12
Average Rating: 4.1/10
Runtime: 1 hr 41 mins
Genre: Comedies
Synopsis: The fourth film from the cabdriver-turned-director, Eric Schaeffer, WIREY SPINDELL investigates Schaeffer's favorite topics: relationships and the romantically challenged. Nine days before his wedding, Wirey Spindell... The fourth film from the cabdriver-turned-director, Eric Schaeffer, WIREY SPINDELL investigates Schaeffer's favorite topics: relationships and the romantically challenged. Nine days before his wedding, Wirey Spindell experiences pre-nuptial jitters and can't perform sexually. His problem sends him into contemplative retreats in his bathroom, where he begins to review the course of his life and loves. Through flashbacks we learn of Wirey's sordid past and polymorphous perversity, which includes an unfortunate encounter with an electrical socket. Based on A LEGEND IN HIS OWN MIND, an unpublished semi-autobiographical novel Schaeffer wrote 10 years earlier, WIREY SPINDELL is a frank investigation of a self-centered, neurotic male, a la Woody Allen. As in his previous films, Schaeffer wrote the screenplay and plays the lead role. Rising star Eric Mabius (THE CROW: SALVATION) plays the younger Wirey, a role in which he gamely takes on some of the most shocking tidbits of Wirey's life. In a nod to Schaeffer's cabdriver background, a scene in a "taxicab" plays a pivotal role in the film. [More]
Starring: Eric Schaeffer, Callie Thorne, Samantha Buck, Eric Mabius
Starring: Eric Schaeffer, Callie Thorne, Samantha Buck, Eric Mabius, Devin Matthews-Johnson, Zane Adlum, Peggy Gormley, John Doman, Jennifer Wiltsie
Director: Eric Schaeffer
Director: Eric Schaeffer
Screenwriter: Eric Schaeffer
Producer: Eric Schaeffer, Dolly Hall, Lloyd Segan, Terence Michael
Composer: Amanda Kravat, Peter Millrose
Get This Movie
Release:
Oct 3, 2000
DVD Features:
- Region 1
- Keep Case
- Anamorphic Widescreen - 1.85
Audio:
- Dolby Digital 5.1 - English
Additional Release Materials:
- Audio Commentary - 1. Eric Schaeffer - Director
- Theatrical Trailer
- Filmographies
Interactive Features:
- Scene Access
- Interactive Menus
DVD-ROM Features:
- Weblink
Reviews for Wirey Spindell
Long, shapeless, and painfully unfunny, Wirey Spindell confirms its maker's status as one of the most distinctively awful filmmakers of his generation.
To say that this movie is true to life is only to say that it's banal, boring and confusing.
A naked attempt at Jerry Maguire-style profundity that elicited 47 temple rubs and 13 audible Jesuses between my companion and I… the comedic equivalent of flat soda.
Wirey Spindell is as idiosyncratic as the name of its hero, which gives this surprisingly affecting film its title.
The big puzzle is why anyone would want to get within 50 feet of the guy, let alone marry him.
As annoying and self-indulgent as the film may be, it can only seem irredeemable once Schaeffer has confirmed what you already suspected -- that he’s using the film to trot out every oddball anecdote from his own life.
For the most part Mr. Schaeffer, by mixing melodrama and comedy in ways that they do not combine, neither shows how Wirey's early life is so terrible that he winds up a drugged and drunken misfit nor jogs the comedy to a level beyond the mildly amusing.
Schaeffer needs to realize that there are few universals in his stories and way too many specifics, and it takes more than a weird name like Wirey Spindell to make a person really distinctive.
Easily the best film that writer-director Eric Schaeffer (My Life's in Turnaround, Fall, If Lucy Fell) has made in his short career as the king of narcissistic indie cinema. But that's like saying that some hate crimes are preferable to others.
What is appallingly lacking in the film is recognizing the possibility that this person's life might be one big bundle of irresponsibility.
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