(ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT 02)

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, May 21 1996 (IPS) - Beautiful women — especially if they fit the blond and thin stereotype set by the media — have all the luck. That, at least, is the premise of ‘The Truth about Cats and Dogs’, a delightful romantic comedy which has been a hit in U.S. cinemas since it opened earlier this month.

Unlike most romantic comedies, ‘The Truth about Cats and Dogs’, a Twentieth Century Fox film directed by Michael Lehmann and written by Audrey Wells, packs a genuine satiric punch. At a time when most U.S. romances focus on attractive young couples, this one tells its story through the eyes of someone who would be regarded as just plain in the standard definition.

Comedienne Janeane Garofalo plays Abby, a radio talk show host who specialises in giving advice about animals, but is wary of people — specifically, men who won’t give her the time of day because she is not a stereotypical beauty.

As a result, when one caller (played by Ben Chaplin) becomes interested in her, she pretends that her neighbour, a model played by Uma Thurman, is the real Abby: a stick-thin blonde rather than a chubbier brunette. She in turn pretends to be Donna, Abby’s fictitious friend, so she can continue to be near the first person to fall in love with her radio personality.

Chaplin soon becomes confused as to which Abby he loves: the attractive but dim Thurman, whom he sees, or the witty and warm Garofalo, whom he hears on the phone.

Like last year’s comedy hit, ‘Clueless’, which was a modern-day reworking of Jane Austen’s ‘Emma’, ‘The Truth about Cats and Dogs’ borrows heavily from the classics — in this case, Edmund Rostand’s ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’. Like that classic tale, the movie draws pathos from a central character whose personality inspires love, but whose appearance does not.

Instead of Cyrano’s long nose, however, Abby’s disfigurement is less overt: Genuinely attractive, she is condemned to see herself as ugly simply because of societal archtypes.

It is that factor which gives this comedy its bite. As Garofalo grumbles to Thurman, “You burp, and guys think it’s cute.” She reacts with stunned wonderment as virtually every man around Thurman struggles to be helpful, while she is ignored.

Wells loads the dialogue with dozens of shrewd observations on beauty myths, from a hilarious exchange at a cosmetics store where Garofalo’s ego is completely crushed to the revealing, poignant moment when Thurman falls in love with Chaplin, simply because he allows her to eat cake. For many women, Wells implies, love means not having to seem beautiful, let alone thin, in a man’s eyes.

The film also offers some of the wittiest dialogue in recent memory, including Thurman’s wry realisation that, “if you are what you eat, then I am nothing.”

And Garofalo gets a snappy rejoinder of her own when Thurman suggests that, between the fake Abby’s beauty and the real one’s brains, they make the perfect woman. No, Garofalo responds, they make the perfect political prisoner: “We strike righteous poses and starve.”

Ironically, Garofalo, one of the most charming actors in cinema since she left the ill-fated comedy show ‘Saturday Night Live’, says she was made to diet and lose 40 pounds to play the part of Abby. Viewers are thus treated with the bizarre sight of a perfectly thin Abby complaining about how fat she is.

Even odder is the belief that Thurman’s oddly anorexic figure is more the male ideal that Garofalo’s — a not-so-subtle sign that the filmmakers share in the very stereotypes that Well’s script undercuts. The film’s message, it seems, could go a long way in Hollywood itself.