CITIZEN RUTH (1996)
A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003
Anyone engaged in political discussions should try to keep those discussions civil. That becomes hard, if not impossible, if someone mentions word "abortion" during it. When people have opinions about that particular issue, those opinions are incredibly strong and positions totally inflexible, making any kind of compromise next to impossible. Hollywood, which tried to evade political controversies in 1990, nevertheless produced a film tackling that issue and, to make this endeavour even more extraordinary, it was a comedy. CITIZEN RUTH, 1996 film written and directed by Alexander Payne, takes humoruistic approach to this debate, making itself unique.
Protagonist of the film is Ruth Stoops (played by Laura Dern), sorry excuse for a human being whose life revolves about sniffing spray paint cans. She had four children, all being taken away for adoption or foster care. When she gets arrested and judge learns about another pregnancy, he offers Ruth simple choice - either to abort and thus save taxpayers' money or spend year in jail. Before Ruth can decide, she is sheltered by Norm (played by Kurthwood Smith) and Gail Stoney (played by Mary Kay Place), local anti-abortion activists who want to convince her that she should have baby no matter what. Before Ruth can really make her mind, she is wooed by Diane (played by Swoosie Kurtz), Moon-worshipping lesbian feminist who has infiltrated pro-life movement. She takes Ruth to isolated farm where she and couple of other pro-choice activists would arrange her abortion. Soon Ruth and the fate of her baby become national news with both pro-life and pro-choice forces determined to score important political victory at the expense of Ruth's health and dignity.
While most of Hollywood films in 1990s dealt with controversial issues by taking clear and very partisan socially liberal or left-leaning stance, CITIZEN RUTH takes different and very dangerous path. To make fun of such unpleasant and emotionally charged issue like abortion requires great deal of balance. Payne provided that to his film by treating both camps as hordes of fanatics and hypocrites. The only problem of the film is that it lacks moral centre; main character is simply too dislikeable and not even the natural charm and comical talent of Laura Dern can't make audience sympathise with her bizarre "plight". However, the movie nevertheless keeps enough of its satirical edge and allows for some good acting performances. Kurthwood Smith, until that time specialised for roles of psychopathic villains, is effective as simple "blue-collar" father of family, while Burt Reynolds shines in the role of charismatic and hypocritical televangelist, in many ways redeeming himself for appearing in terrible STRIPTEASE. The ending of the film is weak, melodramatic and in some ways unsuited for comedy; however, such ending was in some ways unavoidable, because otherwise Payne couldn't have kept the integrity of his "plague on both houses" messages. CITIZEN RUTH might be disappointing for all those who had expected first-class political and social satire, but its mere existence is an achievement worthy of praise.
RATING: 6/10 (++)
Review written on December 18th 2003
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.ofcs.org - Online Films Critics Society
========== X-RAMR-ID: 36582 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 1230782 X-RT-TitleID: 1074317 X-RT-AuthorID: 1307 X-RT-RatingText: 6/10
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews