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Schizopolis
on DVD (1996)
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Brief synopsis of Schizopolis
Marking a return to the low-budget territory that launched his career in 1989 (with SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE), Steven Soderbergh pulls together this freewheeling comedy that is stuffed with an onslaught of visual and verbal puns. Soderbergh plays dual roles as Fletcher Munson and Dr. Jeffrey Korchek. Munson is a nerdy copywriter who finds himself under an extreme amount of pressure when his boss dies, leaving him to write the upcoming speech for T. Azimuth Schwitters, a revered spiritual leader. Korchek is a dentist who begins to have an affair with Munson's wife but finds himself in trouble when he falls for a new patient. Also thrown into the mix is Elmo Oxygen (David Jensen), an orange-jumpsuit-wearing exterminator who spends more time sleeping with his clients than doing actual work. By the time the moment comes for Schwitters to give his speech, the life of each character has been turned completely upside down. Soderbergh mocks, satirizes, and criticizes the late 20th century's hurried, soulless atmosphere, including religion, marriage, the media, the workplace, and male-female sexual relations. This fresh blend of lighthearted comedy and crackling dialogue makes SCHIZOPOLIS an exhilarating romp that recalls the early comedies of Richard Lester.
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Critics Reviews
Radio Times
An inspired surrealist swipe at the increasingly predictable American mainstream or a vanity project gone off the rails? The answer lies somewhere in between these verdicts on Steven Soderbergh's ambitious satire on language, identity, fidelity, advertising, self-help and dentistry. Writer/director Soderbergh also stars as a speech writer, whose wife (Betsy Brantley) is having an affair with a dentist (also played by Soderbergh). Mixing the absurd with the autobiographical, this is a riot of ideas — characters speaking in gibberish or unsubtitled foreign tongues; speeded-up footage; bookends from a cinema stage — but not enough of them come off.
Time Out
Soderbergh's 1996 guerilla movie is perhaps the strangest film from the American indie scene to date. A surreal,...
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