DENISE CALLS UP
(1996)
Clarissa Oon
Directed by: Hal Salwen
Produced by: Sony Pictures Classics.
Cast: Alanna Ubach (Denise), Timothy Daly (Frank), Caroleen Feeney (Barbara). Dan Gunther (Martin).
Run Time: 80 minutes
Rating: ** out of *****
DENISE CALLS UP
Ever feel you're spending your whole life on the Net (ouch!), eating, breathing and excreting web sites ? That your most meaningful relationships are being formed on the Net? That you get your best sex on the Net ?
If first-time director Hal Salwen could shoot an entire movie of characters typing at their computers, he would. As it is, he settles for characters talking on the phone. DENISE CALLS UP is a movie for and about the electronic generation, where characters too caught up with their work and insecurities prefer to live out their relationships and fantasies on the phone. It's a satire - and a sometimes funny one - about how we let handphones, call-waiting and answering machines run our lives.
The problem: DENISE CALLS UP is a movie about an idea. A darn good one, but still an 80 minute-long idea. And despite Salwen's attempt at plots and sub-plots, despite some genuinely funny moments, you can predict the movie's outcome within the first fifteen minutes. You get the drift after a series of shots of characters explaining over the phone why they all couldn't make it for a party - nobody is going to be meeting anybody in this film, they would rather be talking on the phone.
Here's Salwen's plot: while all the characters are in a dysfunctional, telefixated limbo, loud quirky stranger Denise calls up Martin to announce that she is pregnant with his child, courtesy of the sperm he donated to the local bank. As Martin progresses from slamming the phone on her to long phone conversations over the baby's name, his friends - and his friends' friends - get involved, courtesy of call-waiting and double-lines.
In the tigher and more tantalizing sub-plot, Barbara and Jerry are set up on a blind date that neither turns up for. Both profess to have too complicated schedules to ever meet, but they get it going over the phone. With repeated phone sex comes a glitch; what if the other person is simply faking it?
DENISE CALLS UP scores with some inspired moments. Mousy Barbara metamorphoses into a vamp over her cordless, everyone shares the excitement of Denise's delivery through a conference call to her handphone, and Barbara's best friend Gale is killed in a car accident while talking animatedly knicked into another friend's answering machine. (As Gale's overly-chatty aunt recounts, her cordless was knocked into her ear and lodged in her brain.)
But these moments are not enough to sustain the movie. The pace sags, the dialogue drags and not much acting appears to be required of the telephone-touters. And the ending is literally a non-event; as expected, everyone is too chicken to turn up for the party Frank throws in Gale's memory despite promising over the phone that they will. We get the point.
The movie appears to be intent on flogging its terribly-'90s statement until they have it coming out of your ears. Pun intended. There's even a contest on the movie's web site where you can win cellular phones (as if we haven't had enough of these things already). Watch the movie only if you find it philosophy compelling enough for a earful.
Clarissa Oon is a not-quite-21 Lit major who spends more time on the Net than reading her novels.
THE FLYING INKPOT's RATING SYSTEM:
* Wait for the video.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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