Rest & Motion Bodies Movie Review

…I used to live in a town where the main extracurricular activity was having, talking about, or cleaning up after sex; no wonder the leading cause of death was cracking up on the county road that led into town. My driving ambition between ages 10 and 18 was to leave town, but if I'd been 28 at the time, it would have taken me all of eight minutes to get out. Welcome to 94 minutes of Bodies, Rest & Motion, which began life as a play by Roger Hedden. I'm trying to imagine if I would have enjoyed it more watching actual people drift across a stage at 50-odd bucks a performance. I don't think so, although the occasional quirky line might have benefited more from the give-and-take that exists between performers and their audiences in a live setting. Here is the minimalist plot: Nick (Tim Roth) and Beth (Bridget Fonda) plan to move from Enfield to Butte, only Nick runs out on Beth so she has a one-night stand with Sid the house painter (Eric Stoltz) and then runs out on him. At movie's end, Nick is outraged that Beth ran out on him after he ran out on her and Sid is wandering along a highway, looking for Beth. Window dressing is provided by Phoebe Cates as Beth's best friend, Carol, who is also Nick's ex-lover. And that, action lovers, is it, except for a heavenly choir that accompanies this riveting narrative at far-from-heavenly moments. Michael Steinberg's film apparently is trying to wring extra mileage out of the 1991 success of Slacker—only Richard Linklater's satire was fresher and funnier and he didn't force us to stick with the same set of banal characters for the length of HIS movie. The guy behind me laughed most of the way through Bodies, Rest & Motion; I wonder what he does for kicks when he's alone.

1993 (R) 94m/C Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda, Tim Roth, Eric Stoltz, Scott Frederick, Scott Johnson, Alicia Witt, Rich Wheeler, Peter Fonda; D: Michael Steinberg; W: Roger Hedden; C: Bernd Heinl; M: Michael Convertino. VHS, LV, Closed Caption