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Speaking of goofy Hollywood, who new Marty Scorsese could be so funny? His scene may be the most memorable thing in Albert Brooks’s new movie The Muse, a cameos-as-themselves-laden tale about a middle-aged screenwriter who gets a career-saving transfusion of creativity from a descendant of Zeus. Not that the rest of the film, starring and directed and co-written by Brooks (with his frequent collaborator Monica Johnson), isn’t pretty amusing elsewhere, but, especially considering his name has a naturally comedic, Catskillian ring to it, if Scorsese could consistently be that entertaining in front of the camera, he should do it more often. In The Muse, his caffeinated angst fits in well with Brooks, who, as family man Steven Phillips, is facing a dour future. Little consoled by the humanitarian award he won in lieu of an Oscar, he has just blown a three-picture deal with Paramount because everybody says he’s “lost his edge.” These days the only Spielberg he can get a meeting with is the famous one’s cousin Stan (a hilarious bit from Steven Wright). Confiding this to a recently fabulously successful (check out the tan) writer friend Jack (Jeff Bridges), his pitiable condition nets him a meeting with the secret source of Jack’s renewed productivity, the nth generation mythological Sarah (Sharon Stone). It’s not that simple, though; Steven is initially dismayed to learn “It’s not like Rumpelstiltskin -- I won’t wake up with a script?” After an initial barrage of expensive demands -- gifts from Tiffany’s, all-hours personal catering and chauffeurage, a suite at the Four Seasons -- she helps him find fresh possibilities simply by making him take her places and look around at stuff. At great financial cost Steven starts writing again, but the revival gets interrupted when everybody from his wife (divinely bath-watered Andie MacDowell) to James Cameron keeps stealing Sarah’s time and attentions. Equally distressing is the growing question of whether she’s really as supernatural as her demeanor and apparent talents might indicate.
Albert Brooks has always provided a less irritating take on contemporary neuroses than Woody Allen, presenting life in a -- usually -- less absurd, more wry, ironic fashion; his anxieties -- usually -- have a real-world basis that’s not such a stretch to identify with. I keep qualifying that because this is, after all, a movie about a Greek semi-deity living in contemporary southern California. But Brooks takes an outrageous concept and fleshes it out with sincerity. While not his best film, The Muse does makes a good first comedic vehicle for Sharon Stone, letting her vamp around with natty Buckwheat hair that never outstrips her glamour; sure, Sandra Bernhard she’s not, but like Richard Gere in Runaway Bride, there is at least some basically funny instinct present that, if aired more often, might get better with practice. B-
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