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Rated: PG-13; With: Julie Kavner and Samantha Mathis
C+
By Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

The first movie directed by author-screenwriter Nora Ephron (''Heartburn'') turned out to be a harmless little one-hankie comedy about a wisecracking single mom (Julie Kavner) who pursues her dream of becoming a stand-up comic and ends up neglecting her two growing daughters. The movie could almost be a made-for-TV version of ''The Roseanne Arnold Story'': It's like a middle episode entitled ''The Nightclub Years.'' Kavner, in a good performance, captures the brittle layers of ego that go into making a stand-up comic. And though Samantha Mathis seems to be playing a teenager from a more innocent era, her avid self-righteousness rings true. Ephron, though, is too concerned with underlining the nicey-nice motives of everyone on screen. Even when the characters grow huffy and ''confront'' one another, the movie never loses its compulsive desire to soothe.


Posted Mar 06, 1992
 

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