Two Girls and a Guy (Blu-ray)

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Robert Downey, Jr. is one of the better actors of my generation. Through a career marred with drug addiction and arrest, Downey has been nominated twice for an Academy Award and continues to build an impressive resume of character and dramatic roles. He has typically appeared in smaller profile films and before 2008´s "Iron Man," Downey has seem minimal commercial success and his more high profile roles have been in films such as "U.S. Marshals," "Weird Science" and "Air America." However, Downey has received high praise for early performances in "Less Than Zero," "Chaplin" and more recent accolades in films such as "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," "Zodiac," "A Scanner Darkly" and "The Singing Detective." One of the smaller and mostly forgotten roles by Downey during his darker days of drug addiction is the small indie film "Two Girls and a Guy" co-starring Heather Graham and Natasha Gregson Wagner.

"Two Girls and a Guy" features a cast of five and two of the actors in the film appear on screen in one short scene during the beginning of the film. Nearly the entire length of the film takes place in the apartment of actor Blake Allen (Robert Downey, Jr.) as his polygamist ways are realized by his two girlfriends Carla (Heather Graham) and Lou (Natasha Gregson Wagner). Blake has been giving both girls the same romantic lines and tales and they decide to surprise him by waiting for him to arrive home from a tryout for a role. Lou is a fast-talking streetwise girl who has a lot to say and although cute and perky, lacks the beauty of the quiet and easy going Carla. They decide they want to know the rationale for Blake´s infidelity and the best way to do so is to corner the actor and ask him why he led them both to believe they were special and he was faithful to each of them.

Blake views the two women´s brash approach to his treatment of them as an attack and feels victimized as he tries to build more lies to defend himself and uses his lifestyle as an actor as his excuse as he proclaims he truly loved them both. The initial confrontation between the three is very uncomfortable and becomes weird when Blake pretends to shoot himself to teach the girls a lesson. His relationship with his sickly mother comes into play and Carla and Lou ridicule him for essentially being a "Mommy´s Boy." After a little alcohol between Carla and Lou and the initial awkwardness of the confrontation, Carla and Blake retreat to the upstairs bedroom of the loft for a few moments of heated oral sex as it slowly becomes clear that the beautiful Carla is the girl preferred by Blake.

A hot tempered discussion sitting around Blake´s bathtub reveals that both girls have not been honest and faithful to Blake and Lou attempts to engage Blake and Carla in a threesome after revealing she is bisexual. Carla admits to having sexual relationships to more than three men during the ten months that she has dated Blake and after some shouting between the three, Lou leaves Blake for good and gives Carla her number. Blake and Carla engage in a conversation where they admit they are unfaithful and decide that perhaps they are not capable of being in a fully monogamist relationship, but that they do not want to throw away what they have found. Blake is concerned about his mother´s health after her voice seems strained and weakened and asks Carla to wait for him while he leaves to tend to his mother.

Director James Toback is known for his original screenplay for the 1991 Warren Beatty film "Bugsy" and beyond that he directed the recent biographical film "Tyson" on former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson. In "Two Girls and a Boy," Toback has directed what feels like a small stage show and if weren´t for some of the humorous dialogue and the acting skills of Downey, his small picture would be completely forgettable. Toback resorts to using numerous close-ups and a few imaginative camera angles that doesn´t allow his very small film to break the boundaries of its spacious loft apartment. "Two Girls and a Guy" is almost entirely dialogue driven and Toback doesn´t put much of a personal touch on this one man show.

The slight and limited story of "Two Girls and a Guy" keeps the film running at a very slim length of just eighty four minutes and at times the film feels long as the dialogue between the stars drags on. Scenes that do not feature Robert Downey, Jr. feel excessively long and almost meaningless. The heavy and poetic lines of bullshit used by Blake and Carla and Lou are far too colorful to be believable and the first scene in the loft where the two females compare notes is too heavy in English to be entertaining. Watching this scene play out is akin to listening to well written, but uninteresting poetry and the detailed sexual descriptions forced into this prose is not necessarily entertaining or sexy. It as if Toback is trying to prove he is a good writer and there comes a time when dialogue is too well written to be humanly possible even if there exists a plethora of F-bombs and sexual innuendo.

Simply put, there is only one reason to watch this independent film and that is to see Downey in a small challenging role where he is asked to portray a semi-talented actor who has a problem with honesty towards women. Scene after scene, Downey is commanding as Blake Allen and his facial and vocal reactions to the situations in the film are masterful. Watching his character suffer emotional distress while his cleverly crafted worked devolves into a state where he no longer has any control is a testament to his ability as an actor. Downey has portrayed actors before and earned kudos for his take as Charlie Chaplin and his role in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" was excellent, but he shows a shady side of humanity is "Two Girls and a Guy" that works only because he is the one putting on a show.