“ANY DAY NOW” My rating: C+ (Opening Jan. 4 at the Tivoli)
97 minutes | MPAA rating: R
As a showcase for the not-inconsiderable talents of Scottish actor Alan Cumming, “Any Day Now” is quite successful.
Travis Fine’s movie allows Cumming to wrap his tongue around an utterly convincing Queens accent, lets him sing several songs (including the Dylan standard “I Shall Be Released” that spawned the film’s title), and provides opportunities for him to dance it up as a female impersonator.
The film also lets Cumming juggle just about every emotion known to humanity save, perhaps, the joy of childbirth. He’s falmboyant, giddy, hilarious, catty, sad, weepy, etc. etc. etc.
Problem is, his knockout perf is in the middle of a gay-themed soap opera that left me feeling emotionally used and abused.
Alan Cumming, drag star
Cumming plays Rudy, who in 1979 Los Angeles is the star of a lip-syncing drag revue. This leads to a one-night stand with a handsome but closeted customer, an assistant DA named Paul (Garret Dillahunt of TV’s “Raising Hope”).
Their relationship coincides with Rudy’s growing concern for Marco (Isaac Leyva), the mentally handicapped 14-year-old living in the same apartment building. Marco’s mom (Jaime Anne Allman) is a drug user and occasional hooker, and when she’s arrested Rudy opts to take care of Marco rather than see him disappear into the child welfare system.
Over a year he and Paul become Marco’s doting daddies. And then the state steps in to break up the happy family because, well, because gay people can’t be trusted with children.
Though set more than 30 years in the past, the issues and prejudices “Any Day Now” shuffles through are still with us, though thankfully in diminished form.
The film has a cast of good actors who mostly have to play heavies: Frances Fisher and Alan Rachins as prejudiced jurists; Gregg Henry as Marco’s court-appointed attorney, who seems more concerned for his win/loss ratio than giving his client a happy home; Chris Mulkey as Paul’s slimeball boss.
Individual moments in “Any Day Now” work well, usually thanks to Cumming. But Fine and his co-writer, George Arthur Bloom, send us out with the bleakest ending imaginable.
Thanks, guys.
| Robert W. Butler
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