Butler's Cinema Scene

Ethan Hawke, Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd

“JULIET, NAKED” My rating: B+

105 minutes | MPAA rating: R

The drolly amusing “Juliet, Naked,” isn’t my favorite film based on work by Nick Hornby (that would be the sublime “Brooklyn”) but it’s right up there with “About a Boy” and “High Fidelity.”

And like the latter, it’s a comedy/drama that pivots on a guy obsessed with rock music.

Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) teaches pop culture at a small British community college. He’s the kind of geeky prof who, for a course on HBO’s
“The Wire,” supplies his students with a glossary of American inner city words and phrases. You can imagine him leading serious  classroom discussions about the etymological roots of “mofo” and “ho.”

His biggest crush, though, is on a marginal American singer/songwriter named Tucker Crowe whose LP “Juliet”  holds the 43rd place on at least one list of great heartbreak albums.

Duncan loves “Juliet” and scarfs down every bit of information he can find about Tucker Crowe, who vanished a quarter century ago.  Duncan is also the proprietor of a Tucker Crowe web site where he trades theories with other Crowe disciples and writes rambling blogs about how Tucker is the J.D. Salinger of alt rock.

In short, Duncan is perfectly ridiculous. (Not that we can’t relate. Most of us have our little hard-to-explain musical fixations: Richard Thompson. Eric Andersen. The Beau Brummels.)

Anyway, Duncan’s live-in girlfriend Annie (Rose Byrne) has just about had it with the whole Tucker Crowe thing.  When an early stripped-down demo recording of the songs on “Juliet”starts circulating on the Internet, Annie writes a withering (and anonymous) review of what is being called “Juliet, Naked.”

Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke

For Annie it’s an act of rebellion and psychic cleansing. So she’s gobsmacked when the real Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke) emails to congratulate her on her insights. (He agrees…”Juliet, Naked” is a POS.)

More to the point, Tucker is coming to England to visit one of his many illegitimate children. He’d like to meet Annie and…

As directed by Jessie Peretz  (from a screenplay by Evgenia Peretz, Jim Taylor and Tamara Jenkins), “Juliet, Naked” is a low-keyed hoot.

Most of the overt comedy is provided by O’Dowd, who excels at hapless doofuses, and Hawke, who finds great gobs of amusement in Tucker’s shaggy dropout.

Particularly effective is the character’s terrific streak of self-deprecation. You can see why Tucker is able to charm even  ex wives who should know better. (This is Hawke’s second great performance of the year, following his dead-serious work in “First Reformed.”)

Though O’Dowd dominates in the early going, it gradually becomes clear that this is Annie’s story as she begins thinking of liberating herself from a stultifying and predictable relationship. In recent years Byrne has shown some pretty impressive comic chops; here she plays it tight while delivering tantalizing glimpses of the turmoil beneath that placid surface.

Eventually “Juliet, Naked” turns into a romance.  Especially heartening is its ability to deftly juggle swooning and cynicism.  It feels just right.

| Robert W. Butler