L.A. Without a Map
L.A. Without a Map
NR | 26 February 1999 (USA)
L.A. Without a Map Trailers

An aspiring Hollywood actress, on a visit to a charming North England town, has a brief fling with the town undertaker, who also writes obituaries for the local paper. Returning home, where she works as a waitress at a Japanese restaurant, she tells everyone about the handsome "writer" she met on her trip. Unfortunately, he decides to follow her back to Hollywood, setting up the expected light romantic comedy with asides as the newcomer gains experience about the goings on in Hollywood.

Reviews
Protraph Lack of good storyline.
Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!
Solidrariol Am I Missing Something?
Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Smoreni Zmaj Doctor Who got tired of England and platonic relationships with English girls, so he flies to America and marries L.A. actress wannabe. :D7/10
fedor8 Aki Karusmaki or his equally brilliant brother Mika directed and wrote this stunning piece of Europeana. Or Finneana. I love it when these European amateurs poke fun at Hollywood while they themselves aren't capable of making one good movie per decade. Besides, Hollywood is such an obvious and all-too-easy target, and this sort of thing has been done a zillion times before, and mostly much better. The gags are primitive, unfunny, badly directed or written, and the movie has to be endured instead of enjoyed. So trite, the way they yet again use the unfunny, stone-faced Leningrad Cowboys as some kind of sorry comic relief. Many familiar faces in small roles (Saskia Reeves - with about three seconds of screen time, Delpy - as a ridiculously overplayed dumb blonde, Gallo - ridiculously overplaying an L.A. "dude", Depp - "re-doing" his "Dead Man" character as an obvious tribute to Karusmaki's infinitely more talented pal Jarmusch, etc.); these actors probably appeared for nothing, thereby pretentiously supporting Le Europeanne Cinematique Arte-te-te that way. If the Karusmakis are one of the current leaders in Europe's Filmlandschaft then Continental Europe must be in the worst shape than it's ever been. Politically and morally anyway.
JPM_Floreffe Simple but appealing. Maybe not that original but fresh and entertaining. Actors look at ease in the script. The story is well balanced and always under control. Not ambitious but pleasant. Rated 7.
EAT Alex As a director, Mika Kaurismäki is definitely not as talented as his brother Aki, the drawer of great films like La vie de bohéme and Drfiting Clouds. L.A. Without a Map has nothing in it, and proves with "Condition Red" and "Last Border" that Mika Kaurismäki has lost his touch of directing. With "L.A." M. Kaurismäki tries to make a some sort of a satire of Hollywood, and connects it to a love story of a british undertaker and a lovely waitress from Hollywood. David Tennant and Vinessa Shaw play the main characters with out any kind of charisma. When Tennant's undertaker wants to be a writer and Shaw's waitress wants to be an actress in any cost, their relationship in Hollywood seems to be an impossible thing to work out.Vincent Gallo and Julie Delpy make a charming couple in the film, but their chracters are very poorly sketched. Johnny Depp and Jerzy Skolimowski make funny cameos.L.A. Without a Map won't make you laugh when it's supposed to, trust me. But it's not as bad you might expect, it's not a pathetic picture. Kaurismäki has only made a film that will easily erase from memory. And because of that, you can safely watch it. But that's not much.