Sweet but minor

Rating: 7/10 (20 September 1999)

A sweet but minor compendium of fictionalized showbiz chestnuts, with Sean Penn playing a jazz guitarist who - despite drinking and womanizing and general unreliability - enjoys a brief 20's and 30's heyday before fading out of sight. The film keeps a brisk pace, and although Penn's artfully stylized performance could have supported a more probing portrayal, that's not on the agenda: the illustrations of his neurosis are largely played for comedy (of the wistful smile rather than the laugh-out-loud kind). In its zippiness and general inconsequentiality and fake documentary trappings the film sometimes reaches all the way back to Allen's debut, Take The Money And Run. It keeps emphasizing the unreliability of its own portrayal, stressing how the legend may have overtaken the facts, but it doesn't really matter - the film apparently aspires little to art or satire, and achieves its goal of mellow raconteurship.