SLIDING DOORS (1998) **1/2 Alternately parallel and interwoven potential life paths is an interesting subject for discussion, though one unlikely to offer resolution. It's also fertile ground for a film, though I would have thought it would be much more difficult to present. Here they make it look easy, normal, at points nearly pedestrian. Points for all that, though they may have missed out on a couple more with the latter. On the other hand, a fiery artsy presentation probably would have spoken more deeply to the few, but with this straightforward approach (simplified by one of Gwyneth Paltrow's paths getting a very dubious hair redesign) they've engaged the masses. Well, what the hell do the masses know about it? Isn't this esoteric ground for clairvoyants and charlatans? Leaving that all aside, it's a nice little understated not particularly ambitious film that projects lofty sentiments, and actually works. Gwyneth does well, as does bitchy counterpart Jeanne Triplehorn, but it's the male actors that make this thing go. Husbands who have no infidelity in our nature can take the merest look at John Lynch to be entirely satisfied with our lot. John Hannah is a deeper, more sensitive and cerebral variation on the British cartoon now most commonly associated with Hugh Grant. The best-at least funniest and most entertaining-scenes in the film, though, invariably involve Douglas McFerran hunkered over a pint. The bloke of blokes (for such fellows recognize no king, you see)! Wisdom for the wiser, common sense manifest as an esoteric pursuit of the underclasses. More than a bit of truth scattered there inside that one. So maybe it's an entertaining refresher course for philosophy majors, or a pleasant gateway to something daunting for the previously deprived; maybe it's just a fun little film about nice people impeding themselves and each other, well it's at least that.
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