Forgiven

Okay, I need to preface this blog movie review by stating that I absolutely hate Melissa McCarthy.   I find her to be a shrill, one-note slob in pretty much everything she does.

Well, oddly enough, I liked Melissa McCarthy an awful lot in "Can You Ever Forgive Me?".  Mainly because the real life character she plays, author Lee Israel, is a shrill one-note slob.   So it's no surprise that McCarthy is getting major Oscar buzzerino for this portrayal.   I cannot disagree.

Truth be told, I knew very little about the subject matter of Ms. Lee Israel.  I knew she was a celebrity biographer, mainly because I have the book she wrote about Dorothy Kilgallen somewhere in my house.  I knew her work was basically schlock, but I was totally unprepared for what I learned about her in this movie.   

Apparently, back in the 90s when things got tight and book deals were non-existent for Ms. Israel, she began an incredibly illegal cottage industry business of selling forged correspondence to memorabilia collectors.   Yep, she doctored up letters from the literary likes of Noel Coward, Lillian Hellman, and Dorothy Parker who is the one who coined the phrase used as this movie's title.

When we meet Lee, she is a pure shlump with flies all over her dump of an apartment, thanks to the dried cat shit pellets all around the floor.   She's trying to pitch a biography about Fanny Brice to her uninterested editor, played deliciously by the always welcome Jane Curtin.  Indeed, at this juncture in her life, Lee Israel is in the wrong place at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.

Stocking up on vintage typewriters that could have been used by Noel Coward himself, Lee literally trips into this forgery business with the help of her equally sloppy ne'er-do-well friend Jack Hock, played in equally Oscar-worthy gusto by Richard E. Grant.  The journey together of these two losers is one to behold.

Since I was totally unaware of the real life circumstances surrounding their lives, I was completely surprised by the second half of this film.  And that's the reason why I will zip my mouth right now and tell you to simply go see one of the more compelling movies of 2018.

Even if you're like me and can't stand McCarthy, give her this one chance.   For all her past cinematic sins, she is officially...ahem...forgiven.

LEN'S RATING:  Three-and-a-half stars.

Dinner last night:  Grilled brat and German potato salad.