Originally in Bazaar magazine, September 1999
by Richard Rayner
The idea that the rock & roll business is a rat fight between those afraid they're losing their stardom and those desperate to gain it isn't an original one, but it is used to brilliant effect in Sugar Town, the new comedy from writing and directing team Allison Anders and Kurt Voss. A group of faded rock legends, including Clive (John Taylor, formally of Duran Duran), Nick (Michael Des Barres) and Jonesy (Martin Kemp, of Spandau Ballet), realize that their best and perhaps only chance of a future is to get back together for a hopefully lucrative swan song. Intertwined with their story is that of a scarily amoral young singer, Gwen (a great, funny performance from newcomer Jade Gordon), whose ambition is as monstrous as her talent is questionable.
The movie's success lies in the precise and skillful manipulation of its various tones: goofball comedy, tender observation, a cool, almost disgusted satire that is crisp, not overblown. Clive mopes around in a shirt that once belonged to Scottish soccer legend Dennis Law. Nick is distraught when a gorgeous teenager slides up to him in a bar and asks for his autograph -- for her mother. The opportunistic sociopath Gwen gaily trips out the door with the tape of a song while the guy she's paid $200 to write it is overdosing on the floor. And so on. Sugar Town happens in a sunlit and shimmering Los Angeles landscape that is only partly a nightmare. Ally Sheedy is splendid as the costume designer who is ground to dust by the superbly manipulative Gwen, and Rosanna Arquette has a wonderful, possibly career reinventing role as Eva, Clive's sexy steadfast wife, a onetime star of horror flicks who now only gets offered parts as Christina Ricci's mother. It's the chicks who call the shots here, while the guys shamble through, getting shagged or dragged along -- usually by what's between their legs. Sugar Town is perhaps the best L.A. movie since The Player and, like Altman's picture, has the quick and improvised texture of reality.
