In The Soup

Stars: Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs, Barton Fink), Jennifer Beals (Flashdance, Blood and Concrete), Seymour Cassel (Indecent Exposure, Honeymoon in Vegas). As a showcase for the wonderful comic talents of character actors' Steve Buscemi and Seymour Cassel, In the Soup is genuinely entertaining, even if, as a movie, it has problems. Buscemi plays Adolpho Rollo, a struggling Manhattan filmmaker who has to do things like appearing in the buff on the artsy interview show The Naked Truth (produced by director Jim Jarmusch and actress Carol Kane in brief cameos) just to make ends meet. In a desperate attempt to come up with the rent payment, Adolpho takes out a classified ad selling his ridiculously long (hundreds of pages) screenplay. He gets an unusual taker: Joe (Cassel), a con artist who knows an idiot when he sees an ad for one. Telling Adolpho that he will make his film because he wants to be, in film biz talk, "in the soup," Joe enlists Adolpho's aid on a few pointedly illegal errands, such as stealing a car, and burglarizing a house. Before Adolpho can say "cut," he's way in over his head. And to keep him in line, Joe's crazy hemophiliac brother Skippy (Will Patton) makes not-so-veiled threats to Adolpho while bleeding on him for subtle emphasis. The film falters in the second half, as the focus shifts from Adolpho and Joe to Adolpho's interest in his next-door neighbor Angelica (uninspiringly played by Jennifer Beals). Still, it's worth a look. [In the Soup is available in Color or B/W.] Audience: People looking for offbeat comedies.