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Created Mar 14, 2014 08:34PM PST • Edited Aug 28, 2020 09:40PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Genre-movie meets Hollywood in writer-director George Huang’s Swimming with Sharks. Kevin Spacey stars as a psychotic Hollywood asshole, the studio exec from hell, kind of Spacey’s original Horrible Boss.

   Lots of phone in this movie, lots and lots of phone, landlines mostly, other than Spacey’s Bigshot Studio Exec, who carries a huge Motorola flip-phone. Pre-espresso, know what I’m saying? Pre-bottled water!!

   This was still SHOW BUSINESS, where “Punching below the belt is not only respected, it’s allowed.”

   Fortunately, Swimming with Sharks got the details just right.

   • She drinks whiskey. He drinks white wine.
   • “Just Unavailable”
   • Zero Sum Hollywood

   Unfortunately, Huang’s facile and cliche set pieces get old by the third reel. Wimpy music doesn’t help.

   A wee cast of 9 delivers the Hollywood goods, led by the Great Spacey. Cliche comedy limits their upside.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Kevin Spacey lays his hands in the Studio Stereotype cement, his Buddy Ackerman a fearsome depiction of Hollywood Homo Erectus. Not saying anything about his sexual preference, other than it being vigorous. Buddy Ackerman got his, with the Great Spacey hanging in there the whole way down.

   Frank Whaley has to carry the other half of the movie and disappoints under the load. Constitutionally miscast as an aspiring studio exec, he’s forced to play it internally, which is to say, to not play it much at all.

   Michelle Forbes makes an especially statuesque Hollywood producer. Naming her Dawn Lockard an homage to Dawn Steel. Solid.

   Others:

   • Benicio Del Toro in one terrific scene as Rex the Hollywood exec on the rise
   • T.E. Russell underused as a character with the great name of Foster Kane
   • Roy Dotrice as Cyrus Miles
   • Matthew Flint, Patrick Fischler and Jerry Levine as Manny, Moe and Jack

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Nonsexual S&M fantasy in Zero Sum Hollywood focused on three unsympathetic characters disappoints.

    • A Film School graduate
    • His ogre boss
    • The statuesque smartypants producer they both want

    WWHH is basic Film School construction: a love triangle with conflicting angles.

    All gets knit up at the end, depressingly so.

    Recognizing the Assistants

    • George Huang’s assistant was Chug Abramowitz
    • Kevin Spacey’s assistant was Randall Slavin
    • Even the Unit Production Manager had an assistant, Traci Burgard

    Lots of Thanks in the final credits. Wonder what obligations those paid off.

11. Direction Good 3.0

12. Play Good 3.0

13. Music Good 3.0

14. Visuals Good 3.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 3.2

    2.5 • 3.0 • 4.0 make Swimming with Sharks a sordid movie.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Brutal 3.0

19. Rudeness Nasty 4.0

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

    A Mac SE sitting on a desk and a young President Bill Clinton on a magazine-cover set the movie in time.

    As to Zero Sum Hollywood, it is of a piece with what I called Hollywood Business in reviewing Lake Bell’s In a Time or Hollywood Economics in reviewing the Coen Brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty. It’s an economic worldview focused on exploitation and informed by zero sum thinking. Another example is found in The Grifters.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.4

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Natural 1.0