Trailer Review: Multiple Sarcasms

Release Date: March 2010

Website: IMDB page

Starring: Timothy Hutton, Dana Delany, Mira Sorvino, Mario Van Peebles, Stockard Channing

My Review: Is it just me, or does it seem like Timothy Hutton is in the middle of making a big comeback? According to his IMDB profile, he’s been working relatively steadily over the years, but the past couple of years he seems to be cropping up in more recognized projects. For years I just knew him as the “that guy who was the kid in Ordinary People,” but now he’s featured in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, starring with Meg Ryan in Serious Moonlight, leading a band of merry misfits in the television series Leverage, and carrying the entire movie Multiple Sarcasms.

Set in 1979, Multiple Sarcasms features Hutton as a middle-aged man who seems to have everything going for him: He has a good job as an architect, a loving wife, a bright and affectionate daughter, and a lifelong best friend. But as he starts to dwell on the fact that his life is now half over, he begins to question some of the choices he made. So he does what any sane person would do: He gives up his successful career to write a play based on his life so far, even going so far as to enlist the help of a friend who’s a literary agent before he’s even started writing.

Multiple Sarcasms has a pretty impressive supporting case, with Dana Delany as Hutton’s wife who struggles to be supportive while actually loathing his new turn in life. Mira Sorvino is his best friend since childhood, and Stockard Channing is the ball-busting agent he enlists to sell his forthcoming play. Mario Van Peebles also makes an appearance, sporting a pretty kickin’ afro.

Bottom Line: The trailer itself is kind of awful, deciding to abandon that whole “show, don’t tell” thing and instead using an irritating narrator to explain every clip you’re seeing. But I’m willing to chalk it up to “small movie = small marketing budget” since the cast and premise gives me hope that this could be a pretty good—though undoubtedly unrecognized—little movie.