In Hollywood Dreams, Henry Jaglom looked at a young actress (Tanna Frederick) fresh off a bus from Iowa looking to find fame and fortune, and maybe love if she’s lucky, in the City of Angels. Four years later Jaglom returns to young Maggie’s world in Queen of the Lot, following the young actress on her seemingly rise down from the modest level of fame she’s acquired to this point. Maggie is a seeming stand-in for Lindsay Lohan at this point, at a certain level of notice in her career but becoming exponentially more famous because of her run-ins with the law and the paparazzi.
With her second DUI in two weeks forcing her to have an electronic monitoring bracelet on at all times, Maggie has upgraded her lot substantially. The star of a B-level action franchise, and the girlfriend of married movie star Dov Lambert (Christopher Rydell), she finds her life in disarray as her army of sycophants and assistants try to help her get her life back in order. A life, oddly enough, that finds her more obsessed with fame and “Google points” than it was in Hollywood Dreams.Enter into it all Dov’s brother Aaron (Noah Wyle), a failed writer with a “secret” that ends up in a love triangle with his brother and his girlfriend and you have all the ingredients for a disastrous indie film.
Which is exactly what Queen of the Lot is; a disaster that begins with a director who seems to think that emulating Woody Allen’s weaker screenplays is a strength. It’s more of an insult to Allen than a compliment to Jaglom to make that comparison but this is the work of a writer/director maximizing minimal talent in both categories. Considering he feels the urge to use a sort of “meta” moment, pulling quotes from bad review of Dreams for use in dialogue in a painfully awkward scene, Queen of the Lot feels like a bit of an experiment as opposed to being a true attempt at a film.
Jaglom has an extensive career of films that no one has ever heard of where he does one thing exceptionally poorly: ape Woody Allen. And it’s not good Woody Allen, like Annie Hall or Bananas era Woody Allen. This is Scoop and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger level Allen, the past his prime and no new tricks or witticisms era where Allen has fallen in love with the worst excesses of his youth and no one has the courage to force him not to do otherwise. Jaglom doesn’t even do that very well, making Stranger look like a brilliantly written tour de force by comparison.
It doesn’t help that Jaglom is using a cast of relative unknowns with the film’s biggest star, Wyle, several years removed from the height of his fame. Wyle for the most part brings a sense of professionalism and star power to the film that is otherwise lacking. Wyle is the only true professional actor in this film and it shows; the way he handles himself and tries to carry scenes shows how much further along he is than the rest of the cast. While never the best member of that cast in any season of E.R, being around a handful of veteran actors has raised his ability to the point where it’s obvious what 11 years of working with names like George Clooney and Anthony Edwards will do. It’s not a brilliant performance, nor is it a very good one, but he looks like a young Pacino in comparison.
Jaglom obviously has a comfort level with the cast, including Frederick (functioning as his muse, a low rent Scarlett Johansson to continue the Allen metaphor), but it doesn’t mean that any of them are great undiscovered talent. With a budget of $500,000 this is probably about as good as he could afford. There is the old maxim of getting what you pay for and it’s probably true in this case.
Director: Henry Jaglom
Notable Cast: Tanna Frederick, Noah Wyle, Christopher Rydell
Writer(s): Henry Jaglom
