Picking Up the Pieces | | Cast : | Woody Allen | | Director : | Alfonso Arau | | Studio : | Artisan Entertainment | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 2000 | | DVD Released Date : | May 22, 2001 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | January 28, 2005 | | Summary | Great hook and then Arau's farce just ends up disappointing | Content
 | In "Picking Up the Pieces" Woody Allen plays a kosher butcher named Tex Cowley, complete with the cowboy boots and Stetson, who chops up his philandering wife Candy (Sharon Stone) into seven pieces. He buries the pieces across the border from Texas in New Mexico, but loses Candy's hand. A blind woman stumbles across the hand, which is still giving the finger (apparently a last act of defiance as Candy was butchered), and is cured. The next thing we know the hand is being venerated in the church of a small town for its ability to work miracles, much to the dismay of the local priest, Father Leo (David Schwimmer), and the delight of Mayor Machado (Cheech Marin) and the locals. After all, not only are their prayers answered but the town ends up being overrun by tourists willing to pay for anything having to do with the hand.
Now, you look at that plot summary and the stellar cast that shows up for this one and you would think "Picking Up the Pieces" is a Woody Allen movie, but it is actually written by Bill Wilson and directed by Alfonso Arau. It is the first screenplay for the writer but the director did "Like Water for Chocolate" and "A Walk in the Clouds," which would certainly explain why the cast showed up for this one. That is because the script does not know what to do with this rather interesting premise. There are some funny moments, but ultimately "Picking Up the Pieces" makes you appreciate the coherence and passion of Kevin Smith's "Dogma."
I want to think that this film is a satire, but I am not sure exactly what the target is supposed to be here. I do not think it is the Catholic Church, even though the Vatican dispatches Elliott Gould, Fran Drescher and Andy Dick to authenticate "the hand of the Virgin." I thought maybe it was a scathing look the notion of faith, but that seemed off point since the hand is indeed miraculous even though if from the nature of the miracles it seems clear the hand belongs to an American. Then I mulled over notions of justice given that counterbalancing the miracles of the hand is the quest of Bobo (Keiffer Sutherland), a Texas lawman and one of Candy's many lovers who wants to bring her husband to justice. But that did not work out to a tenable position either.
Then at the end in Woody Allen's final voice over, the morale (or punch line) to the film is revealed. That was almost enough for me to drop this 2000 comedy's rating one more star and you understand why this film went direct to video in the United States (but was actually released in Spain, presumably because of Arau, and in France, obviously because of Allen's name in the cast). But the premise is too good even if the execution is that bad. Still, even though there was a commentary track in which the director probably explains what he was thinking, I decided to skip it because once Arau explained in the featurette on the DVD that being the key to being politically incorrect was to be subversive, it became clear there really was no real point to what was going on, just the aforementioned punch line.
Allen's nebbish actually gets to be less of a nebbish than we are accustomed to and there are some nice moments when he is up against Sutherland's hardnosed cop. However the focal character in the film is Schwimmer's priest, who is, ironically enough, the one character who is outside of what is going on with the hand and its miracles. I thought that the fact he was more interested in Desi (Maria Grazia Cucinotta), a local prostitute, than he was in his church was a key to understanding the film, but that turned out not to be the case either in this farcical fantasy. Eddie Griffin as Sediento ("Always thirsty" apparently), the town drunk, is the biggest scene stealer as the miracles and tourists get his character to speak up as the conscience for the town, but he turns out to be a dead end. Arau tells us this is a black romantic comedy with a touch of farce done in a magical realistic manner as an example of political incorrectness. I am not prepared to argue against that interpretation fo the text, but knowing that is what is going on does not really help you get any more out of watching the film.
In terms of DVD extras are a series of interview clips with individual cast members, but not including Allen and Stone, which would probably have been the most interesting ones of all, in keeping with our overall disappointment with the film. But there is a trivia game, which will punish you for having paid so much attention to the film and sometimes confuse you as to whether the clips they show are telling you if you got it right or wrong. |
| Rating | | | Date | January 24, 2005 | | Summary | Picking Up the Feces | Content
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I moaned throughout this sad little stain on Woody's resume. I
guess I was hoping that it would eventually get righted, but it
never happens. Once upon a time Woody directed and starred
in Play It Again Sam, a bouquet to Casablanca, a film with one
of the best exit lines ever. Picking Up the Pieces ends with
one of the worst.
The execution of Kiefer Sutherland's character is unbearable to watch.
He is made a human pinata and beaten to death by men, women,
and children. There's no humor in it, vindication, carnal satisfaction.
Nothing. Alfonso Arau slipped so badly it's hard to believe the
same guy directed Like Water for Chocolate. I guess we all have
missteps. This is a trip, stumble, and fall.
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| Rating | | | Date | January 02, 2005 | | Summary | Funny and Pointing | Content
| "Picking up the Pieces" is one of the funniest movies I have seen in, well, a long, long time.
It is a movie with quite a rich fabric - beginning with the obvious reference to "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", then rollicking through the rich landscape of various idiotic lores, beliefs and customs of the Catholic Church, which it mocks relentlessly and deservedly.
Only a true and knowledgeable Catholic, such as Alfonso Arau, could make this movie, and only a true and knowledgeable Catholic will truly enjoy its sting. But its message goes beyond the Catholic penchant for miracles, hypocrisy, sexual perversions, double-talk, corruption, and naivety. It hits every religion, including snake handlers of Southern Appalachia, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Moslems, because, at the end of the day, they are all equally hypocritical, deranged, corrupt, and... dangerous.
Woody Allen, who plays a Texan butcher and talks to himself and his dog a lot, is amusing in the highly symbolic Texan hat. David Schwimmer, of "Friends", plays a bewildered and confused young priest, who had strayed from the path of righteousness. Kiefer Sutherland, who plays a corrupt Texas sheriff with a personal motive, is downright scary, and Maria Grazia Cucinotta is pleasingly sexy and exotic.
But what makes the movie so special and enjoyable is its setting amongst the ordinary people of a New Mexico town and their wild antics.
If you have ever seen "Lust in the Dust" or "Serial Mom", you will like this movie too, because it is of a similar genre. If you like reading Voltaire, you'll like this movie too, because its humor and its mockery of human folly is similar.
But if you're a self-appointed religious bigot like Bin Laden, or like Silas of "The Da Vinci Code", you'll hate this movie and its every joke, which is probably why it has never been widely distributed in the US of A.
If you're something in-between, you may or may not like it.
The movie falls flat on a couple of occasions, unfortunately including the final comment made by the departing Texan butcher (Woody Allen), which, I think, is out of place - artistically and semantically. I'd go for something more lofty. |
| Rating | | | Date | September 21, 2004 | | Summary | Surprise! The film was SUPPOSED to be absurd! | Content
| No, not every joke works, but many do. And yes, it's completely irreverent, a bit disrespectful and a hair gross at times. The language is kind of rough. But it's still an enjoyable, if not constantly funny film. And it was definitely supposed to be lopsided and offbeat, with, I think, some intentional miscasting to a degree. The problem is, I tried to order this twice, and it got cancelled both times! I had to buy an import. Amazon... can you really buy this now???? |
| Rating | | | Date | June 01, 2003 | | Summary | Your Typical Weak Buzz Saw Milagro Farce | Content
| Although this often execrable, cheaply punning (e.g., "see" "si"), monolingual (the devil's!) monstrosity is easily among Woody Allen's worst (if not his worst) it is still, not so surprisingly, better than most films. That is because despite its socially unredeeming ploys (e.g., sex in church, a slattern-wife's severed bird-flipping hand that grants miracles such as big breasts and a dirt-scraping penis to a midget of a darker hue; and a poor Jimi Hendrix copy who sings obnoxious songs) it is kind of fun to look at the cast tramp through the mock New Mexico town El Nino. The end of the film, from which Allen with seeming genuine hostility draws the sermonizing moral that God seems to be saying "if you can't take a joke go .... yourself," is symptomatic of the film's comic misfiring and lack of subtlety. Some T, but little A although I confess I fell asleep in the middle. My favorite part was the recycled Lenny Bruce joke that the Jews didn't really kill Jesus, it was a party that got out of hand. Some of the bits with Kiefer Sutherland as a state trooper were also good. Allen, who plays a magician-butcher who cuts his pretty wife (Sharon Stone, good job) in half with a buzz saw to begin the show, near the end comes to confess his crime prefacing his remarks with the confession that he has never confessed before because he is Jewish. But what are the many scenes of psychoanalysis depicted in his films if not confessions by another name? I think this movie actually has a serious intent that was compromised by commercial expectations and Allen's aesthetic choice to make it a complete farce; it is clever, and better than watching Jim Carey pull faces, but lacks heart-as if Allen were seething with anger but had only the light, feathery pillows of commercially successful comedy available with which to vent his intense frustration (at Catholicism and religious hypocrisy in general, unfaithful women, cute guys, himself, death, unappreciative audiences, etc. etc.) |
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