Slums of Beverly Hills
by Tamara Jenkins
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DVD details
Actor: Alan Arkin, Bryna Weiss, Charlotte Stewart, Marisa Tomei, Natasha LyonneDirector: Tamara Jenkins
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.85:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-01-19
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of Slums of Beverly Hills
DVD Review: Wonderfully entertaining
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a wonderful movie, thoroughly enjoyable. Beautifully drawn characters, really interesting people. The writing and direction by Tamara Jenkins are glorious. The actors are so good in their roles. It's one of those movies where you keep thinking "I hope I can remember that line to use myself". Funny and also moving and heart-warming. This will be a favourite of mine to be watched many times.DVD Review: Not for all tastes, but...
Summary: 4 Stars
If you have a fetish for the 1970s, can relate to a transient lifestyle and grew up in the acquaintance of that peculiar breed of earthy, middle-class Jews, you'll love this movie as much as I did. If not, your results may vary. I intended to see this when it was released to theaters a decade ago, but never got around to it. At my girlfriend's suggestion, I finally took the time to watch it and realized how dumb I was to have waited so long.
Two of this movie's highlights include great performances from a terrific cast and spot-on costume design that ably exhibits the tacky glory of the middle '70s. My only gripe pertains to Lyonne's monotone narration, which is unsuitably dull.
Recommended on a double bill with "Welcome to the Dollhouse" or "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."
DVD Review: Slums of silliness.
Summary: 2 Stars
Slums of Beverly Hills had all the potential to be a great indie flick but tom my chargin, I couldn't relate or tolerate any of the characters. Natasha Lyonne is an unique actress but even her talent can't save this uneven and boring film. Alan Arkin and Marisa Tomei also try to make this dud into something great but after awhile you can't stand how their characters are so inane and pathetic. Slums... is a critics darling and I can't figure out why?DVD Review: A little bit of everything
Summary: 3 Stars
It is 1976 and Murray Abramowitz (Alan Arkin) is a 65 years old car salesman who also happens to be the single father of three children. He moves from one cheap apartment complex to the next because he can't afford the rent, but stays within the city limits of Beverly Hills so his kids can go to the public schools there. To help make ends meet, he makes a deal with his brother Mickey (Carl Reiner). Murray will take in Mickey's troubled daughter, Rita (Marisa Tomei), and help her get through nursing school. Murray's teenage daughter, Vivian (Natasha Lyonne), is perhaps the main focal point of the story as she struggles to make the transition from being a girl into a young woman.
Slums of Beverly Hills barely hit movie theaters in 1998 before bowing out, grossing a whopping $5.5 million in the process. It isn't a great movie, but it's worth watching. Marisa Tomei, Alan Arkin, and Natasha Lyonne all give great performances even if the script isn't always sharp enough to take full advantage of their capabilities. Fortunately, there is one scene involving Carl Reiner along with the rest of the family that is truly funny and worth watching the movie for. The rest of the cast is also very well portrayed and as goofy as they are, it's easy to believe that this really is a family.
I recommend this movie to anyone looking for something off-beat and different. It's part comedy, part drama, part teenager-coming-of-age story. It's not likely to make your short list of all-time favorites but it's an enjoyable enough way to spend 90 minutes.
DVD Review: not your everyday movie
Summary: 4 Stars
i first saw Slums of Beverly Hills when i was about... 10. Not to mislead anyone [this is NOT a movie for 10 year olds] but i've found that even at that age, it's outlandish humour made an impression. I never really forgot it. It's really just a great original movie with intense sexual undertones. Well, that's being nice, you see about 4 shots of boobs. And at times it may seem ridiculous. Like when some of the more emotional dialogues are spoken in gibberish.
quite recently i decided to buy this movie of my childhood and wouldn't you know it, someone ELSE who had seen it with me the first time, had just as many 'THAT movie' stories [scars] of it as me.
it may be corky, it may be random, but Slums of Beverly Hills paints the picture of a coming to age movie that is just flat out memerable.
Description of Slums of Beverly Hills
Pack your bags, but leave your inhibitions behind, as you move up to this star studded comedy of outrageous proportions that's "riskier and funnier than the rest" (Los Angeles magazine). On the road to womanhood in the '70's, Vivian (Natasha Lyonne) is eOne of the freshest, most enjoyable independent films of 1998, Slums of Beverly Hills finds both comedy and compassion in the post-puberty woes of a soon-to-be high school freshman named Vivian Abramowitz (Natasha Lyonne), who has been either blessed or cursed (depending on who you ask) by breasts that have generously blossomed along with her sexual curiosity. It's not an easy time, especially since Vivian and her two brothers live a nomadic, close-knit existence with their unemployed father (Alan Arkin), who keeps moving them from one ratty apartment to another on the fringes of Beverly Hills. Joining them in their latest one-bedroom home is their flaky cousin Rita (Marisa Tomei), whose latest stint in rehab has been replaced by the half-baked goal of a nursing career.
Writer-director Tamara Jenkins clearly loves these characters, and her film has the feel of good-natured autobiography, set in 1976 (without indulging phony nostalgia) and using rich, character-related comedy to express the understanding that all families are dysfunctional in their own functional way. Whether Vivian is allowing a new neighbor (indie-film regular Kevin Corrigan) to touch her breasts or taking cousin Rita's favorite vibrator for a euphoric test-drive, Jenkins and the wonderfully sardonic Lyonne maintain a fine balance of hilarity and sexual awkwardness while giving equal time to Vivian's taunting siblings and well-meaning father. Consisting of loosely connected episodes that add up to a vivid family portrait, this remarkably well-cast film will be a treat for anyone who remembers (or is still going through) the emotional minefield of adolescence. --Jeff Shannon
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