The Anniversary Party

The Anniversary Party (2001) starring Jennifer Jason Leigh, Alan Cumming, Jane Adams, Mina Badie, Jennifer Beals, Phoebe Cates, John Hickey, Parker Posey, Kevin Kline, Gwyneth Paltrow, John C. Reilly. Written and directed by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming. A recently reunited couple (Jason Leigh and Cumming) hold a party to celebrate their sixth anniversary. He is a writer, about to become a director, and she is an actress. Their friends are mostly movie industry people or writers, and they all come over to interact and make drama, and in real life they are mostly actor friends of Jason Leigh and Cumming. The movie is modestly entertaining, but it kind of runs off the rails when one of the guests (Paltrow) offers the gift of Ecstasy to the married couple, with enough thrown in for everyone at the party to take Ecstasy. The characters in the movie do not act as I would have expected a bunch of people on Ecstasy to act, but what do I know? It strikes me as kind of a Hollywood insider film, and that makes it kind of interesting, but mostly it just seems like a low-budget vanity project. (English subtitles are available on the disc for the hard of hearing.) Grade: B