Quiet Days in Hollywood Reviews

While mooning over snapshots of her favorite Hollywood star, Peter Blaine (Peter Dobson), optimistic streetwalker Lolita (Hilary Swank) plies her trade. Meanwhile, ambitious waitress Julie (Meta Golding) wants more out of life than serving customers like Richard (Chad Lowe), a snooty attorney. Although Richard temporarily responds to Julie's naivete, he's obsessed with paying back his disaffected boss Bobby (Bill Cusack) over a soured record deal. In the meantime, he cuckolds Bobby who's too preoccupied screwing his maid to notice, anyway. At the top of this human food chain, bisexual Peter Blaine frets about rehabilitating his drug-abusing lover Patrick (Stephen Mailer). After Patrick overdoses, a disillusioned Peter picks up Lolita, who doesn't realize her current trick is her movie idol. While his spoiled peers only seem to find misery with each other, can AC-DC Peter find contentment with a whore? Although this uneven misfire veers close to unbelievable PRETTY WOMAN territory at its climax, the seriocomic scenes between Swank and Dobson are in fact the only believable ones in the entire movie. When not wallowing in mawkish sentiment, this superficial and vulgar rehash of LA RONDE, based on an obscure German film by writer-director Josef Rusnak, resorts to coarse humor and soft-core smuttiness. Throughout it all, the flat irony pours out like Evian water without the fizz.