Citizen Ruth (1996)

First of all, Citizen Ruth reminded me about solvent abuse.
God... No one does that anymore do they? Used to be a major thing. And I remembered that and i don't know why that is something inordinately funny about huffing glue to me. I guess compared to other drugs, it doesn't look so severe. You just look like you're having a panic attack.
Anyway, this film is about a women who's addicted to doing this (as well as anything else she could get her hands on) and finds her self pregnant. Due the continuous habit of Ruth (played by Laura Dern) getting getting caught and having her 4th or 5th child at this point, she's advised by a judge to have an abortion. This begins a battle between the hard left and hard right to decide the future of this fetus.
I first found out about this film while reading Peter Biskind's Down and Dirty Pictures. It's an incredibly rich idea or concept and the idea has always stuck with me. It seemed impossible to me that that could ever make a comedy out of it and land it as well. But surprisingly, it can have it's cake and eat it!
By some act of movie miracle, Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor manage with their debut film to make a generally even-handed movie about Abortion and have it be thoroughly hilarious as well as sensitive and affecting. First off the script is solid and it's perfectly paced with a strong sense of story. They also wrote a great character in Ruth and it's the best thing I've ever seen Laura Dern ever do. Ruth is an incredibly stupid person, who unfortunately also has a bad addictive personality. She's selfish and childish and i guess that takes the sting out of the tail of all the A-word talk because she's so unaware of herself, she doesn't understand the severity of her choices and Dern hits the nail on the head perfectly, not by portraying her as a junkie but as a wholly lazy woman.
Other notable cast members include Swoosie Kurtz and Mary Kay Place playing right wing protesters and everyone's favorite American bureaucrat prick, Kurtwood Smith as their leader. They're all playing roles that they've all done before several times but it works for the film to make for a realistic environment for when things get more incredulous.

I watched Citizen Ruth (1995) on BBC 2.
My 2011 in Movies will return with Bridesmaids (2011)...