Taglines: just another story about love.
Zach (Lukas Haas) seems to be living the Hollywood bachelor dream – he’s got a house in the hills, the phone numbers for dozens of beautiful women and a hard-partying lifestyle aided and abetted by his bartender pal, Dan (Jake Busey). It seems nothing can tie down this divorcée father, until he meets “Crazy Eyes” (Madeline Zima) – the one woman he can’t have. As the two embark on a love-crazed, booze-fueled relationship, Zach’s family issues begin to take center-stage, questioning whether or not this partying lost boy can step up to the challenge and become a man.
Crazy Eyes is a 2012 independent film co-written and directed by Adam Sherman. It stars Lukas Haas, Madeline Zima, Jake Busey, Tania Raymonde, Blake Garrett Rosenthal, Valerie Mahaffey, Moran Atias, Ned Bellamy, Laura Miro, Regine Nehy, Joshua Thorpe and Natalie Floyd.
Film Review for Crazy Eyes
Adam Sherman’s film is an autobiographical portrait of a rich, drunken L.A. obsessed with bedding a sexually uncooperative fellow barfly. In his sophomore feature Crazy Eyes, filmmaker Adam Sherman (Happiness Runs) delivers an apparently autobiographical portrait of a rich, drunken L.A. wastrel obsessed with bedding a sexually uncooperative fellow barfly. We should all have such problems.
A suitably dissipated-looking Lukas Haas stars as the director’s alter ego Zach, a playboy of indeterminate means who lives in a mansion and spends every night getting drunk at a bar manned by his best friend (Jake Busey). Accompanying him on most of these excursions is the flighty, sexy Rebecca (Madeline Zima, playing a character not far removed from her breakout role in Showtime’s Californication), whose nickname gives the film its title.
That the duo purportedly set out most nights to catch a local exhibition of paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, only to be waylaid by alcoholic temptation, is the principal running gag of the repetitive screenplay co-written by Sherman, Dave Reeves and Rachel Hardisty.
Narrating the proceedings in existential fashion, Zach — who resembles a younger Charles Bukowski minus the wit — proves a less-than-compelling central figure despite subplots concerning his troubled relationships with his overly indulgent parents (Ray Wise, Valerie Mahaffey) and neglected five-year-old son (Blake Garrett Rosenthal).
And his relationship with Crazy Eyes, who winds up undressed in his bed most nights even while adamantly refusing to accept his often highly physical advances, is less an incisive portrait of romantic obsession than an example of the film’s frequent descents into misogyny.
The largely aimless narrative, filled with drunken bar fights and endless gross depictions of the after-effects of heavy drinking, quickly tests the viewer’s patience. Neither Haas nor Zima is able to fully redeem their one-dimensional characters, though Busey, who’s clearly inherited his father Gary’s charisma, provides some amusing moments as the hair-triggered bartender.
Crazy Eyes (2012)
Directed by: Adam Sherman
Starring: Lukas Haas, Madeline Zima, Jake Busey, Tania Raymonde, Blake Garrett Rosenthal, Valerie Mahaffey, Moran Atias, Ned Bellamy, Laura Miro, Regine Nehy, Joshua Thorpe, Natalie Floyd
Screenplay by: Adam Sherman, Dave Reeves
Production Design by: Celine Diano
Cinematography by: Sharone Meir
Film Editing by: Sam Bauer
Costume Design by: Erica Nicotra
Set Decoration by: Karen Ipock
Art Direction by: Carl Baldasso
Music by: Bobby Johnston
Distributed by: Strand Releasing
Release Date: July 6, 2012
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