Epoch Times Blog

Sarah Jessica Parker’s hubby Mathew Broderick made an appearance at the Sundance Film Festival this week, but not for the film she starred in Smart People, but for Diminished Capacity, a new film from director Terry Kinney which stars Broderick as the lead. Interestingly enough, the film is also a comedy!

Broderick plays Cooper an editorial cartoonist living in Chicago, who suffers from short term memory loss he obtained after an accident. Cooper decides to go home after his mother asks him to take care of his Uncle Rollie, played by Alan Alda, who also isn’t all there in the head. Rollie has concocted a device which allows fish to “write poetry”. He also owns an extremely rare baseball card which is worth a pretty penny, however, he has made a regular occurrence of bragging about the card, making it very well known it the town, and leaving the possibility of the card being stolen. Amidst this, Cooper convinces Uncle Rollie to travel with him, and his child hood sweet heart played by Virginia Madsen, and her son to Chicago to sell the card at a baseball card expo. The trip and the experience allow each of the characters to reflect albeit in a comical way.

A well crafted script has Alda and Broderick in one of their most entertaining films to date. Alda plays a character completely outside of the scope of his past performances and portrays this aging mentally deficient grandfather to the T. Keep on eye on Alda for a potential award nomination for next year. Broderick and Madsen are both on the mark with great performaces, and Terry Kinney does a great job for his sophmore directorial feature film.