A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III

I vaguely remember a review of this - probably Roger Ebert's - that made this sound like a trainwreck. But at least it's only an 80-minute train wreck. Charlie Sheen plays the title character, a advertising designer who goes into a tailspin when his girlfriend breaks up with him. He spends some time in the hospital, bemoaning the loss of her and trying to figure out why she took it so personally he kept all those nude pictures of his past girlfriends. He's aided in his quest for a clue by his comedian friend Kirby, his accountant Saul (played by Bill Murray), and occasionally his sister, played by Patricia Arquette.

I'm not sure what point the film is trying to make. To an extent, it seems like it's trying to explore Charles, Kirby, and Saul's ugly attitudes towards women. The whole thing where they only want "hot" women, but believe women are trying to trap them and conspire against them. It explores this through a series of hallucinations, or scenes that are meant to be Charles' fantasies, something like that. At the end, it seems as though Charles recognizes he had an unrealistic idea of what their relationship was going to be, but he's also talking about how he doesn't want to reach the point where he sees her when she's old and he'll feel nothing. So his version of acknowledging it doesn't seem to addressing it so much as shrugging and saying, "That's who I am. Oh well."

Saul may have learned something, near the end, but maybe not. Maybe all he figured out was a realistic assessment of himself, and the fact he's damn lucky he found a woman willing to be with him and raise kids with him, and he should try not to lose that by blaming her for aging. It's not like Bill Murray's ever been some handsome dude, and he looks like a 10 pound sack of crap that got dragged down a gravel road 20 miles in this movie.

There's a scene at the end, during a company Christmas party, where someone trots out what is supposed to be marionette of Charles, and you can see a look on at least three different actors' faces of "What the hell am I doing in this movie?" Bill Murray's one, Aubrey Plaza's another, although Parks and Recreation has led me to believe that's her default expression.

It seems like a movie that's not as clever as it thinks it is.