Just Looking

Just when it seemed that fizzling Vanity Fair cover girl Gretchen Mol was one more bad role away from a Sally Struthers future, she pulls off a thoroughly delightful supporting turn in this otherwise limp 1950s comedy. As Hedy Coletti, the nurse next door, she's the creamy object of 14-year-old Lenny's lust. A pint-sized Jewish wisecracker in a family full of pinchers, pokers, and hand wavers, Lenny has vowed to spy on a couple having sex by summer's end, and Hedy and her boyfriend are prime prey. But the kid's regular butcher-shop deliveries to Hedy's home throw the plan for a loop. He can always look, but now he's been touched -- especially by her memories of her late father.

Seinfeld's Jason Alexander, directing for the first time, is as graceless as George Costanza behind the camera. And the producing credit for Jean Doumanian, Woody Allen's long-time majordomo, only underscores the shtick in Marshall Karp's voiceover-heavy script. Still, for a few minutes, when Mol and co-star Ryan Merriman trade sad stories over watered-down beer, Just Looking is just magical. Screens Friday, September 15 at 7:15 and 9:30 p.m. and Saturday, September 16 at noon and 2:30 and 5 p.m.

-- Scott Heller

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Film Festival Feature Films

| A Fight to the Finish: Stories of Polio | A Man is Mostly Water | A Trial in Prague | Blessed Art Thou | Charming Billy | Enemies of Laughter | Enlightenment Guaranteed | The Exorcist | Harry, He's Here to Help | Into the Arms of Strangers | Just Looking | Ratcatcher | Seven Girlfriends | Two Family House | The Yards | You Can Count On Me |

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