| Reviewed by Elliot V. Kotek (October 2007) Writer/Director: Matthew Miele (& co-written with Chris Fetchko)
Starring: Ernie Hudson, Graeme Malcolm, Debbie Cullen, Lou Myers, Stephen Furst, Phyllis Diller, Lou Rawls, Doug E. Doug In-a-nutshell: In what feels like a filmed play where the directors are married to language over logic, Ernie Hudson clearly enjoys himself as a man who is happy to be homeless, or, rather, a man who is content to reside in a house known as New York City. Hudson, who has racked up more than 130 credits on all sorts of theatrical fare, portrays a popular, chess-playing vagabond who quotes Thoreau, drums his digits on subways and park benches, and extorts dollars from dog owners over their picking up of dog poop on NYC sidewalks. Jake strikes up a friendship of sorts with a British-accented bum, Cameron Dunne, whose spoken word is similarly stellar. The two initially search for a platform from which Dunne can plunge to his death. But Dunne turns out to be adept at avoiding his commitment to suicide - and also turns out to be quite handy at tickling the ivories. Together, the two men drum up a plan to hold a rally for the homeless. Montages of twenty-dollar whores and a time lapse of Jake's daily outings provide the best moments in editing, but otherwise the storytelling is simple (to the point of being more than a little slow), and while more could have been made to set up the surprising and satisfying twist, the film works, and includes a beautiful moment with Lou Rawls as a hot-dog vendor. That you can sometimes see the World Trade Center in the background of Jake and Cameron's scenes on the Brooklyn Bridge serves to date the film (which won awards at Atlantic City Film Festival and Santa Barbara International Film Festival back in 2000, and then received the Festival Prize at the Big Apple Film Festival as recently as 2006) and also acknowledges the determination of the filmmakers, who have waited the better part of the last decade for this film to secure its DVD distribution. As Miele's first feature film, Everything's Jake is a complete piece of cinema that could have proved even more popular had the script been treated to first-rate production values. And with Miele's sophomore effort, Eavesdrop, currently in post-production with a very classy cast (Tovah Feldshuh, Anna Chlumsky, Wendie Malick and Alan Ruck), Jake deserves a visit. Now available on DVD through Warner Bros Home Video. |
