Henry Fool (1998)

It's pretentious and a bit too long, but writer/director Hal Hartley manages to get out of his own way enough to make Henry Fool a satisfactory excursion into the offbeat.Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) is an alienated and nearly mute garbage man. He lives with his aimlessly slutty sister (Parker Posey) and his burnt out husk of a mother (Maria Porter). Their quietly desperate lives are upended one day when Henry Fool (Thomas Jay Ryan) takes up residence in the dingy basement apartment in the Grim family home. Henry is obscene and impulsive, debonair and contemptuous. He's like a bipolar homeless man with a masters degree in English literature, someone who always comports himself as being much smarter than his circumstances.Henry is a writer and claims to have written a "confession" that will roil the world with its power and insight, but he won't let Simon read it. What Henry does do is inspire Simon to put his own thoughts to paper with the result being an epic poem of such profane beauty that everyone who encounters it must respond with either devotion or loathing. Henry guides Simon into cultivating his own talent in spite of the world's opposition, while falling in love with his sister and revealing more of a past that turns out not to be quite as high minded as Henry likes to put on.Eventually Simon takes on the life of Henry's dreams. Henry, however, falls down into Simon's old life until an act of either heroism or debauchery moves Simon to try and salvage what's left of his one-time mentor's existence.This is what you call a "character drama" where what the characters do is less important to enjoying the film than how they do it. What distinguishes Henry Fool from other such work is that it's really not much of a showcase for its cast. Thomas Jay Ryan is given a charismatic part to chew on, but the other actors either have little to do or, like James Urbaniak, they play characters of such limited scope that it never seems like they do much.No, what makes this urban yarn of frustrating reality work is its slow unfolding of a paradox. Simon Grim is a sub-ordinary man who meets the seemingly extraordinary Henry Fool and is led to being something more than he could have ever imagined. But that same transformation of Simon shows Henry to be nothing at all like what he appears. Simon becomes what Henry always presented himself as, and Henry is forced to abandon his dreams and become what Simon was. It's a very careful take down of intellectual pretension underscored by an admiration of real creative ability. And yes, a movie can attack pretension while being itself pretentious.Throw in cultural observations, some amusing and some overblown, along with a prescient understanding of what the internet was going to do to the publishing business, and you've got a diverting but slightly taxing motion picture.

I wasn't going to review this one, because I only watched/own these films because I'm an avid Goldblum fan. Yeah, I know he's not in Henry Fool, but he IS in Fay Grim, and because Fay Grim makes no sense WHATsoever without having first watched Henry Fool, I have them both.Having started out that way, Henry Fool was, for me, something to "get through" in order to get to the "good stuff" with Jeff.Boy, was I surprised. Henry Fool is a brilliant piece of work. I was shocked, frankly. Now, I can't stop telling my friends about it. This is thoughtful, even if it is a bit dialog-heavy. It is fun, even as it takes itself seriously. It appears superficially fun and quirky, even as it surreptitiously broadens its depth. It entertains, even as it teaches us to shoot for the stars.Henry appears to follow his own advice - he appears to shoot for the stars, when all the while, he seems to be buying into his own con...or does he? This film is awesomely quirky, but there is substance beneath the idiosyncratic screenplay. This has become one of my new favorites. However, you can't fully appreciate the depth of the deceit without following this one up with a good strong dose of Fay Grim. Check it out, or lose out on a GREAT ending to this film.I would recommend this for just about anyone who likes intrigues, livid dramas, and/or Parker Posey. I have to say this is one of her best performances. She's a NUT in this! It rates an 8.4/10 from...the Fiend :.

I found myself in a bizarre predicament with this film. It was a film that I could easily see myself discussing with a group of friends, and remained thinking about it after seeing it. However, I got no enjoyment out of it. From an intellectual point of view there were plenty of topics worthy of discussing, such as the worth of the mass view of your work and what constitutes art versus pornography but the problem for me was the presentation of these ideas.For me, the supposed hero of the story did nothing of his own accord and was led around by the ear of the title character doing exactly what he said. It's hard to root for him if he really has no stock in what he is doing. As well, the title character Henry Fool is unlikeable, and not just because he has a history of deviance. He practically forces his desire for success on someone who otherwise would not want it. There is no dynamic between the two, just a man and his tool that he uses for his own personal gains. To me, neither was likable and it ruined the chance of me rooting for their successes.Meanwhile, the film as a whole seemed needlessly self referential, occasionally fashioning some blatant point through the main character's work or another character's comment that applies almost directly to the film itself. It makes it feel as if the characters are only ways of forcing the writer's concepts about his own work to come to the open, and it uses them for whatever it wants and lets them pick up the pieces afterward.After all this, however, I think that I would still recommend you watch the film. While I have much bad to say about it, it made me think, and when any film does this, it is worth watching simply because I can easily see how a variety of opinions could be formed about the film. Furthermore, not being a writer I found it difficult to identify with any of the predicaments, which might add a personal touch to those who can. At the least I can appreciate an intelligent man trying to make a film of the topics that feel relevant to him.

As a native New Yorker, I tend to be drawn to movies and television shows shot in either the 5 Boroughs, and/or Long Island. I also have the occasional appetite for independent films, and don't mind movies starring total unknowns. But none of these factors have ever made me a fan of Hal Hartley's movies. Believe it or not though, an IMDb user suggested that fans of Christy Carlson Romano watch a copy of this one, and I've been appreciating it ever since.Simon Grimm(James Urbaniak) works as a nerdy put-upon garbage man in Queens, NYC, who still lives with his promiscuous sister Fay and depressed mother(Hey, don't laugh. I know of people with better jobs who still can't afford homes of their own), who rents a room out to people whenever they can. Along comes Henry Fool(e), who invites himself into his family's rented room. Fool(Thomas Jay Ryan) is an ex-writer who passes himself off as an iconoclastic lover being persecuted by both the masses and "the man," partially because he had a regretful fling with a 13-year-old girl at one point in his life. Henry Fool IS a fool, because he's convinced that he and Grimm are somehow cut from the same cloth, and encourages him to write down whatever is on his mind. After some spelling and grammatical corrections, Fool does everything he can to expose this writing to the public, which is denounced as obscene by some and brilliant by others. Hartley does the same thing to Simon's story as Quentin Tarantino does with the glowing briefcase being retrieved by Vincent Vega(John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield(Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction. He also puts his characters through different stages in their lives, like Warren(Kevin Corrigan) who starts out as a street thug having public trysts with a girlfriend and attacking Simon for seeing one of them while he's trying to do his job, to supporting far-right anti-immigration political candidate Owen Feer(Don Creech), to becoming a low-life wife & child abuser.Contrary to popular assumption, events *do* take place in Hartley's movies -- obscure stars get surpassed by total unknowns. In "The Unbelievable Truth," the biggest name in that movie was Jeff Howard, who's better known for his role as Joe Ferone in Up the Down Staircase. Then Adrienne Shelley replaced him as the biggest name. Likewise in "Henry Fool" the biggest name from this movie was Parker Posey, and now it's Christy Carlson Romano. In Romano's case, however, her fame came from her work on Even Stevens & Kim Possible, not because of her very non-Disney performance here, which proves to be crucial to the direction of the story. And all I'm going to reveal about that is that parents who's kids are fans of KP and/or Ren & Louis Stevens will be very surprised as to how far Warren's stepdaughter Pearl is willing to go to end her suffering, and let you figure the rest out for yourself.