Color Me Kubrick

Movie buffs will certainly enjoy this slight but engaging comedy, loosely based on the real story of an astonishingly reckless conman who impersonated director Stanley Kubrick during the 1990s, tricking victims from all social classes in spite of the fact that his knowledge of the filmmaker's career was spotty at best. John Malkovich turns in a bravura performance as the shameless Alan Conway, a charlatan whose ability to read his marks enabled him to convince a raft of people—from aspiring fashion designers and heavy metal musicians to posh club owners and a popular English singer anxious to make it in America—of his supposed celebrity. The episodic nature of the script and a failure to provide much background or context make Color Me Kubrick more of a lark than anything else (even the subtitle, "A True…ish Story," is overly cute), and the emphasis on Conway's flamboyantly gay inclinations seems rather heavy-handed. But there are enough incidental pleasures—including numerous allusions to Kubrick films—to make this a winner with the director's many devotees, while strong supporting turns from Jim Davidson as a would-be Las Vegas crooner and Richard E. Grant as a desperate club owner both insure that despite Malkovich's overpowering presence this isn't entirely a one-man show. Recommended. (F. Swietek)