Linoleum

Next Stop Wonderland

(1998)

What I had most effectively forgotten about this since last seeing it 5 years ago: how much smoking there is. Other orality, too: gum chewing, a good deal of drinking, a little kissing. But the smoking--I guess what my sensitivity to that, this time and never in the past, is really about is how little smoking there is in movies nowadays, especially among sympathetic lead characters (and especially especially, I suspect, sympathetic lead female characters).

What I never forget and what always annoys me: a continuity error in the spelling of Alan's surname, which first appears on his plumber father's toolbox as Monteiro (e-before-i being a Portuguese orthographic standard, and that presumably being the family's heritage) but later on his truck and work overalls as Montiero. This is a bigger deal than it might be in a film in which Brazilian music and sensibilities were less central.

What I keep wondering: what has become of Connecticut filmmaker Brad Anderson? I guess the answer is that he's been doing a lot of TV, including episodes of The Wire, Treme, and Boardwalk Empire. Also (something else I'd forgotten), there was the 2008 film Transsiberian, which was . . . well, . . . interesting. IMDb has him in preproduction on The Hive, with Halle Berry and Abigail Breslin; OK, we'll see.

Meanwhile, this remains one of my favorite, and one of the smartest, romcoms of the past couple of decades, and if Hope Davis is no longer My Future Wife, she remains one of my favorite Former Future Wives.