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April 11-17, 2002
screen picks
Sexaholix: A Love Story (premieres Sat., April 13, 10 p.m., HBO) The movies don't really seem to know what to do with John Leguizamo, which is definitely our loss. Apart from his roles in William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, Leguizamo's been grossly underused by live-action filmmakers, consigned to menial parts based more on his ethnicity than his talents. (Luckily, he's had no such trouble with animation -- check out Ice Age for proof.) The connections between R+J/MR director Baz Luhrmann's mania for style and Leguizamo's speed-of-light delivery are obvious: He takes the stage in this, his fourth one-man show, like he's just run down a hill. Like Leguizamo's Freak, Sexaholix: A Love Story is more confessional than theatrical. Unlike Mambo Mouth or Spic-O-Rama, Sexaholix slips in and out of characters without costume changes, and not every transition between facing-front stand-up comedy and acted-out scene comes off seamlessly; performing in New York's Beacon Theater, Leguizamo wavers between putting on an act and staging a show. He's such an astonishing performer, though, that even if he's ever-so-slightly resting on his laurels, he can still beat everyone else around the block. And he needs that energy, too, to pump life into a subject that's brought down many a monologist before him: fatherhood. "I have a son and a daughter ... so I have everything but a life," he opens, and joy and regret do battle for the next hour and a half. Movie studios have been absurdly slow to recognize the audience for Latin entertainment -- leaving tiny IFC Film to snap up Alfonso Cuarón's brilliant Y Tu Mamá También, which is now well on its way to being a breakout hit -- but television, whatever its drawbacks, has always been a lot quicker to respond to the audience's shifting needs (even if they don't stick with their choices). Hell, Leguizamo even had his own show for five minutes in 1995. (That would be House of Buggin', trivia fans.) Who knows? In 70 years, some bawling best-actress nominee might be acknowledging him.
