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Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti Shine in 'The Debut' at Telluride Film Festival
Confirmed
In Short: Comedy returns to the big screen with 'The Debut,' a hilarious and heartwarming look at community theater starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.
The part instead goes to ace regional performer Serena Cherry, a star veteran of this Jersey theatre which you can tell by the large poster of her as Evita (Bernadette Peters in a cameo at the film’s start auditioning with a dynamite vocal), but Mona is the only other person auditioning for the role as it turns out (she actually took ALL the info from the bulletin board) and her rather pathetic rendition of one of the show’s songs is quickly stopped by grizzled veteran director Jerry (Giamatti).
Joining this community fits the bill, until it doesn’t, and Eisenberg and Moore know just how far to the edge you can go without losing credibility—or the audience. The fervor at their first concert in Cardiff is more than just a bunch of screaming fans operating at 'Eras Tour'-levels of enthusiasm, nor is it even akin to the football game hooliganism for which the Welsh police chief briefs the event staff to prepare.
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- You get the feeling this person is so shy she’s invisible, but that all changes when, after seeing a casting call on the supermarket bulletin board she boldly sets out to audition for a local community production of a musical called Nosy Neighbors.
- Eisenberg wrote all the Broadway-ish songs with titles like “Girl From 4F, Boy From 46D” and the anthem Mona (and Peters) get to sing with varying results, “The City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Can’t Spit Me Out)”.
- At one point during an intense Moore rehearsal scene the laughter was so pervasive at today’s World Premiere at the Telluride Film Festival that the audience broke out into sustained and raucous applause.
- It is well deserved because comedy is an increasingly rare bird on the big screen these days, and this one is an absolute joy to behold in a packed theatre.
- Moore plays Mona, an unremarkable New Jersey housewife, basically now walking through life unnoticed even by husband (Patrick Fabian) who just wants her to have dinner ready and drive the kids around.
- If ever there was an instant classic example of comedy timing and delivery it is what Moore does here.
- They even get their act together enough to sit for a lone talking head-style interview that begins narrating a greater portion of the film as the setlist nears its end.
- “Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger” offers a definitive behind-the-scenes glimpse of how this secular sanctuary came to be, starting with the tense and uncertain rehearsals before following the band’s global journey.