Movies
Liberty Heights
Barry Levinson goes back to Baltimore, back to the setting of his Diner and Avalon, back to the Fifties, back to the bygone days of school prayer, segregation, and striptease with pasties, in order to remember what it was like to find out that the whole world was not Jewish. Sometimes he doesn't remember so well: it seems doubtful that in 1954 a Jewish teenager would allude to Tab Hunter as the WASP ideal, and it's not possible that he would cite Perry Mason as a TV lawyer. The cars, clothes, furniture, and so forth, are enjoyable until you notice that they're all so narrowly and rigidly in period that the whole world looks like a magazine ad. This is, in any case, largely old ground (the Jewish mother, the shiksa, rock-and-roll, all that), and, after Levinson steamrolls over it, very flat ground, too. With Ben Foster, Adrien Brody, Joe Mantegna, and Bebe Neuwirth. 1999.
Reader Rating:
MPAA Rating: R
