Dummy

Shy and awkward Steven struggles to make a love connection with his employment counselor, Lorena (Vera Farminga) whom he meets while looking for a gig, and comes to find that his bawdy, outspoken, wooden sidekick can win him social advancement as well as financial gain. (Afterall, what woman can resist a man and his wooden companion?#*!) Steven's only friend, Fangora (Milla Jovovich), an unemployed punk-rock singer and his emotional polar opposite, carries most of the film. Instead of bottling her disdain for her suburban environment as Steven does, Fangora wears her heart firmly on her camouflaged sleeve. Jovovich gives an explosive and passionate performance that makes you eagerly await her next scene. And in some respect, her journey to find her own voice not only echoes the main theme, but at times is more entertaining.

Dummy, paying homage to the offbeat medium of ventriloquism, plays as a quirky romantic comedy, making for a weird mix of the vaudevillian Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy schtick and the eccentric love affair of Jeremiah S. Chechik's Benny and Joon. Performing all of the puppetry and ventriloquism, Brody pulls off the seemingly difficult task of imbuing a magic creepiness to the talking dummy and at times giving him more life than his meek operator. Though the film isn't without fault - the boy-meets-girl plot is somewhat predictable and occasionally lags - it's a warm, quirky story about throwing one's voice and finding it at the same time. Proving in the end that you can learn a lot from a dummy.