LITTLE BLACK BOOK

Rating: 3

LITTLE BLACK BOOK was a pleasant surprise, expecting as I was another mindless bit of drivel highlighted by obvious jokes and a pedestrian script. Now, I don’t want to oversell it, but it is with great relief that I report that what started out as a forgettable bit of fluff gradually turned into something a bit more substantial. A bit.
Our heroine is Stacy (Brittany Murphy). She’s an eager and bright-eyed career gal with a dream, to work with Diane Sawyer. Her mother (Sharon Lawrence), only slightly discombobulated when her husband deserts her, is her cheerleader, urging her along with helpful slogans and a selection from her extensive Carly Simon collection. Her theory is that there is nothing in life that a song from Carly can’t help and the soundtrack is a tribute to that school of thought. Stacy is about to learn a big lesson about life and she’ll learn it as an associate producer working for Kippie Can (Kathy Bates), a once-hot talk-show host on the way down, reduced to covering topics such as “Grandma’s A Hooker, Get Over It.” Think of her as the love child of Oprah and Jerry Springer. Still bright-eyed but hopelessly green, Stacy is taken under wing by Barb (Holly Hunter) a fellow associate producer and rising star in the hierarchy. It is Barb who explains the ropes about the show, about life in general, and about Stacy’s boyfriend Derek (Ron Livingstone) in particular. Through a series of accidents and deliberate snooping, Stacy has gained access to Derek’s palm pilot, the eponymous little black book, and with it, his romantic past. Egged on by Barb, she decides to use her job as a way to interview his old flames thereby discovering what went wrong and avoiding the same mistakes. Big mistake. Two of them, a vacuous supermodel and an overachieving gynecologist aren’t troubling, but the third, a chef who is not only still carrying a torch for Derek, but is also genuinely nice and, worse, probably better for Derek. It’s just the start of a whole lot of angst, mistaken identities, and a tissue of lies that, as it should, gets more complicated as things progress.
A film can go two ways from here. It can devolve into silliness or it can tell a story that’s actually interesting. This one chooses the latter, or, as I like to think of it, the high road. It holds true even when Stacy, working undercover, ends up getting a pelvic exam from ex number two. There’s a fine layer of weltschmerz in the doings at Kippie’s show, a place where orangutans, goats, and guests spoiling for a fight wander backstage without anyone much noticing. The staff is much too wrapped up in pitching ideas, mostly about midgets, stabbing one another in the back, and pretending that they’re not all on a sinking ship. You can almost smell the nervous sweat.
Murphy, who until now has been allowed little more than the chance to show off her poofy hair, squeaky voice, and an ability to take a pratfall, shows a fine talent for the material, both the light comedy and the moments of tear-stained self-reflection when things go bad. There’s a keen sense of being completely in the moment that overcomes things such as the farting dog sequence, the movie’s lowest point. It’s a not inconsequential achievement that she’s not wiped off the screen by veterans Hunter, who does the bitter brainy bit to perfection, or Bates, whose boundless energy as a smiling steamroller is like knocking back a bracing tumbler of hard cider.
LITTLE BLACK BOOK succeeds as a summer popcorn flick. It’s fun without being sloppy. Yet it’s also sly in the subtle way it deals with such unpopcorny things as the price of selling out. Take it any way you like.