Who is Lisa Kudrow

"It's a comedy, sort of," a title card announces at the start of Happy Endings--just after Mamie (Lisa Kudrow) has been hit by a car. So it is, but talk about an unhappy beginning! Never fear, writer/director Don Roos will fulfill the promise of that title in several unexpected ways. The story then flashes back to 1983 for Mamie's life-altering encounter with her stepbrother. Mamie and Charley (Steve Coogan) will struggle with its consequences for the rest of the film. Does her teen pregnancy explain the fact that she became an abortion counselor or that he came out of the closet? Roos doesn't say, but nor does he judge. He loves his characters--foibles and all--in his ambitious, Altman-esque follow-up to the acerbic, yet heartfelt The Opposite of Sex. As before, Kudrow is the center around which the other plotlines revolve (and her uptight, yet likable Mamie couldn't resemble TV's Phoebe less). In the end, though, Maggie Gyllenhaal's seductive Jude and Tom Arnold's sensitive Frank are Roos' most inspired creations. Their relationship is one of contemporary cinema's oddest and most touching. The happy ending for one will be real, the other imaginary, but everyone will earn the one they get. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

From The New Yorker
A complicated and excessively self-conscious mess that doesn't, in the end, add up to a lot but that has many affecting and funny moments along the way. Lisa Kudrow, teaming up again with the writer- director Don Roos (they made the tart "Opposite of Sex" in 1998), plays Mamie, a sardonic Los Angeles woman who gave up her son at birth and is being blackmailed by a chaotic young filmmaker (Jesse Bradford) who claims to know the name and whereabouts of the boy, now a teen-ager. In parallel stories, two gay men duel with a lesbian couple over the paternity of a baby, and a drifting young club singer and sex parasite (Maggie Gyllenhaal) seduces both a young gay man (Jason Ritter) and his wealthy widower father (Tom Arnold). Roos is trying to devise a shorthand method of unifying a whirl of narrative events, but he hasn't done the basic work of construction that would pull the stories together. Much of the writing is lively, however, and the actors are good-especially Gyllenhaal, who, as a very bad girl, has an irresistible smile. -David Denby

Lisa Kudrow, Steve Coogan, Jesse Bradford, Bobby Cannavale, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Director: Don Roos

Analyze This
Cast Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal together in a film and it should be a sucker's bet as to who's going to be funnier and who's going to give the more nuanced performance. Somehow, though, De Niro walks away with most of the laughs in Analyze This, a buddy action-comedy about a mob boss (De Niro, natch) suffering from panic attacks who makes a nebbishy shrink (Crystal, natch) an offer he can't refuse--actually, it's not really an offer, it's a command. The good doctor is forced to help the gangster get in touch with his feelings. Had the brilliant TV series The Sopranos not underscored how thin and watery and shticky director-cowriter Harold Ramis's approach to such potentially rich material actually is, the movie--a hit in theaters and De Niro's biggest film ever--would seem more fresh and kicky. De Niro's definitely a hoot as the ever milder menace, and Crystal actually concentrates on giving a credible performance opposite the acting legend (alas, he doesn't turn his character's fear of his patient into inspired comedy, as Alan Arkin did in Grosse Pointe Blank). The conclusion devolves into the requisite gunplay, and Chazz Palminteri and Lisa Kudrow are criminally wasted as an opposing mob boss and Crystal's fiancée, respectively, but overall, it's breezy fun. --David Kronke

Analyze That
Analyze That has more bada bing than its lukewarm reception would lead you to expect. Analyze This had the advantage of a then-fresh idea--Robert De Niro as a neurotic mob boss seeking therapy with reluctant shrink Billy Crystal--but that idea's stale, so this sequel relies on established chemistry and zesty dialogue that matches the original. There's nothing wrong with a retread when it's this funny, and De Niro's latter-day penchant for comedy suits him well when, as kingpin Paul Vitti, he lures Dr. Sobel (Crystal) into a prison breakout scheme involving faked catatonia and West Side Story show tunes. The contrived plot involves Vitti's criminal comeback. Unfortunately, there's little room for Lisa Kudrow as Sobel's sarcastic wife, but De Niro's Raging Bull costar Cathy Moriarty-Gentile is welcomed as a rival mob queen. You want a comedy masterpiece? Fuhgeddaboudit. You want 95 minutes of easy fun? It's right here... and don't miss those obligatory outtakes. --Jeff Shannon

Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri, Kresimir Novakovic
Director: Harold Ramis

John Travolta plays Russ Richards, a small-town weatherman who is such a local celebrity that he even has his own table at the local Denny's. He obviously sees himself as a big deal about town, and he's got the spending habits to prove it, including payments on a big house and a fancy Jaguar. His unstable life is further complicated by the fling he's having with the station's lotto girl (Lisa Kudrow), who is also having an affair with the married station manager (Ed O'Neill).

On the verge of bankruptcy, Russ asks the advice of his good friend and strip club owner Gig (Tim Roth), who cooks up a plan to fix the lottery. The hardest part of the whole scheme turns out to be finding a trustworthy person to cash in the ticket. This is a mean-spirited comedy, which is to be expected from writer Adam Resnick (Cabin Boy, TV's Get a Life), but not from director Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle). Then again, maybe she always has patronized the characters in her movies. Clearly, the casting needed to tap into the oddball surrealism of someone like Chris Elliott, whereas Travolta is just playing a dumb, self-deluded guy, and Kudrow, in her most unlikable role yet, is playing not just a ditz but a ditsy sociopath. The movie is not a total waste, thanks mostly to some stunning supporting performances by Tim Roth, Ed O'Neill, and especially Bill Pullman as the lazy cop. Overall, a mixed bag. -- Andy Spletzer

John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Ed O'Neill, Michael Rapaport
Director: Nora Ephron

Christina Ricci had a great year in 1998. The young actress continued to cast off her youthful image from the Addams Family movies and made a big splash on the independent movie scene, especially in this scathingly witty comedy in which Ricci has the central role. Here she plays Dedee, a buxom, sexually precocious teenager who's pregnant, cynical, and looking for a volunteer father for her unborn child. This takes her to the home of her gay half-brother (Martin Donovan) whose current lover (Ivan Sergei) becomes Dedee's latest target for seduction. That's just the start of the mischief that Dedee so masterfully orchestrates, and Lisa Kudrow (from TV's Friends) is also on hand to deliver some of the movie's most quotable dialogue while fending off the affection of a local policeman played by Lyle Lovett.

If all this sounds rather sordid, rest assured that the movie's got a warm heart (well, sort of) beating beneath all of its sharp-edged sarcasm. Writer-director Don Roos (Single White Female) injects most of the movie's appeal and humor through Dedee's voice-over narration, which constantly reminds us that even the most familiar movie clichés can be cleverly overturned. As a result, The Opposite of Sex is the opposite of boring. -- Jeff Shannon

Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Galecki
Director: Don Roos

Generation X falls into the mold. The back cover blurb of this video describes it as a "smart and wry Working Girl for a postmodern world"--but let's be clear. Actually, sisters Jill and Karen Sprecher have cowritten (and Jill Sprecher directed) a modernist dark comedy about working Generation Xers. Were it truly postmodern, it would not work so well--instead, the Sprechers have given us dark but funny commentary on working life as a temp. The clean, straight lines of cinematographer Jim Denault's aesthetic bolster the woman-against-the-world motif of the meaningless pursuit of full-time employment. Why four intelligent, capable women languish in perpetual boredom looking for this unfulfilling nirvana is not at issue, but it is this unquestioned conformity to tradition that frustrates the audience while letting us laugh at what is and is not happening.

Toni Collette's (Muriel's Wedding) portrayal of Iris is sharp: a shy, mousy, somewhat insecure twentysomething provides interior monologue, both through her voice-over commentary and the notebook diary she religiously keeps, and evolves over a year of temping at a credit company--but it is difficult to explain what she evolves into. She gains an understanding of friendship and betrayal, but at the cost of not even the least sentimentality. She asserts her personal desires for career that are in conflict with those of the working world and her father, but without reaching true fulfillment. She outgrows her don't-notice-me haircut to become an assertive, self-confident person, yet suffers intensely and silently when a handsome coworker doesn't recognize her on the street.

Strong performances from both Parker Posey and Lisa Kudrow (who since Friends and the witty Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion seems to be suffering increasingly from stereotyping) give Collette a solid surface off of which she bounces her quiet, psychological role to great satisfaction. -- Erik Macki

Lisa Kudrow, Toni Collette, Parker Posey and Alanna Ubach star in this all too true comedy about life at the office. These four young temps try to maintain their sanity on the job while maintaining upward mobility in this gal-pal comedy.

Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach, Helen FitzGerald
Director: Jill Sprecher