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Set in 1976 and gleeful in its brashness, the nostalgic saga opens with pushy Murray Abramowitz (Alan Arkin) negotiating with a bra saleswoman. Well meaning but impossibly intrusive, the sixty-five-year-old divorcee has organised this first brassiere buying pilgrimage for fifteen-year-old Vivian (Natasha Lyonne), his suddenly matured offspring. Like much of the film, the scene is uncomfortably hilarious. But while embarrassed, the spunky innocent at the centre of the story isn't as horror-struck as some girls might be in similar circumstances.
The brassy middle child and her two brothers have been uprooted more than five times in the last three months, sometimes in the middle of the night, as down-on-his-luck Murray perennially seeks to keep home and hearth within the tony city limits of Beverly Hills (for the schools). Vivian has had time to adapt to Father's unsettling ways and she's just as bewildered by her pending puberty as he is.
Perhaps the craziest thing about Ms. Jenkins's often-irreverent take on the itinerant Abramowitzes is how sensitive and studious its sociological deductions are. While the director's first film exhibits fairly good style and decent meter, the sheer volume of dysfunction coupled with a healthy share of shock-value nudity can't help but vie for centre stage. Yet, what Slums of Beverly Hills lacks in cohesiveness, it makes up for in schmaltz and spirit. Hence, its more sentient moments are rarely obscured. This despite a gaggle of offbeat characters, an unusual brand of sexual frankness that flirts on the fringes of titillation, and a circus-like style of plot exposition.
Starved for a mother figure at this delicate juncture in her life, Vivian heartily welcomes bawdy cousin Rita (Marisa Tomei) after she escapes from a drug rehab center up north. Warmly sincere but hopelessly stuck in the 60's drug culture, Ms. Tomei's likeable buffoon arrives, lo and behold, recently pregnant. So it only figures she'd be the one to tutor Vivian on the birds and the bees; especially comical is the lesson featuring battery operated paraphernalia.
Other loonies who populate the plot include: Kevin Corrigan as worthless neighbour Eliot, Vivian's drug-dealing suitor whose proudest possession is his Charles Manson T-shirt; Carl Reiner in a brief but sharp-tongued stint as Uncle Mickey, Murray's wealthy older brother; and David Krumholtz as big brother Ben, a sardonic chip off the old block who's hoping to get the lead role in the Beverly Hills H.S. production of Guys and Dolls. His rendition of "Luck Be A Lady", dressed only in his jockey shorts, is a sight to behold.
Millionaire Mickey is willing to subsidise his poor sibling's version of the Beverly Hills lifestyle, such as it is, if he'll look after the unstable Rita. But there's a greater compromise Arkin's superbly drawn Murray must endure in return for such brotherly beneficence, and here the often-profound movie mines one of its several sad-but-true observations about familial relations. On the happier side of the same coin, the love and devotion Vivian and her brothers show for their ever-scheming dad makes for a heart-warming portrait.
After one of Murray's better apartment-finding coups along the periphery of opulent Beverly Hills, Vivian, wide-eyed and optimistic, jubilantly asks: "So, we're not poor anymore, right....we're right in the middle now.....not poor, not rich, right in the middle, right?"
For the moment, they bask in their bourgeoisie abundance. And on such rare occasions, Dad recites one of the family's tales of mythological lore -- about how he once had a restaurant business, and how he once caught an employee stealing from him, and how they certainly weren't poor then. "And anyway, our family has money. Uncle Mickey's rich. We're just the poor side of the family, right Dad?" asks Vivian.
Ms. Jenkins's bittersweet socioeconomics suggest a literary authority. Whether lower-middle-class like the Abramowitzes or aristocrats fallen from grace like Booth Tarkington's Magnificent Ambersons, families must rationalise their circumstances in order to preserve their dignity.
Prior to recounting her saga, the filmmaker quotes Tolstoi: "All happy families are alike; all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way." It is apparent Mr. Tolstoi knew from the Abramowitzes.
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