By Reena Dutt
Arizona Daily Wildcat
October 6, 1997

A match made in Hollywood

Photo courtesy of Gramercy Pictures Arizona Daily Wildcat Janeane Garofalo stars as a political campaign worker sent to a small town in Ireland to investigate the Irish roots of her boss, a Senatorial candidate.

Reena Dutt

If "love" is not on your bad-word list, it will prove invaluable in describing "The Matchmaker," starring Janeane Garofalo. The movie, which opened Friday, is about an American political campaign worker who gets stuck in Ireland's Matchmaking Festival. Marcy Tizard (Garofalo) is sent to Ballinagra, Ireland to find the ancestors of her boss, a Senatorial candidate, in order to boost his campaign back in the States. Little does she know the Matchmaking Festival is going on in Ballinagra, something that will profoundly influence her life.

The movie contains three subplots which form a laughable sequence of events when they come together. Separately, the stories involve lonely people, people looking for love and people who fear it. Each subplot holds its own in "The Matchmaker." One of the subplots involves the local town matchmaker, whose job it is to set couples up for marriage; another focuses on a not-so-cute man, Sean (David O'Hara), who has fallen in love with Marcy.

The scenes tend to snap by in certain segments of the film, creating the essential comic rhythm. For example, the audience is suddenly taken out of a scene featuring a political discussion and cut into one of the matchmaker himself (Milo O'Shea), talking about the incentives for his job.

These short segments, seemingly cut together at random, finally lead up to the last scenes of the movie, which give a Hollywood sense of finality to the film. Since each short snap of a scene involves a different subplot, those stories are given room to grow throughout the movie. By the end of the film they all come together to create one big revelation for the characters.

Photo courtesy of Gramercy Pictures Arizona Daily Wildcat Marcy (Garofalo) isn't quite sure how she feels about the attention of Sean, played byDavid O'Hara, in the Mark Joffe film "The Matchmaker," which opened Friday.

The town matchmakers are the source of some of the funniest and saddest scenes. They enliven the plot and steer the movie clear of becoming just another love story. Boy A does not automatically fall in love with Girl B, and the story does not concentrate on winning someone's heart. Instead, the writers allow the idea of matchmaking to generate other possibilities.

Marcy experiences the evolution of a cynic and more. And Garofalo, who plays the cynic better than anyone else in Hollywood, makes Marcy a lovable character, a character to whom everyone wants to show that intimacy is indeed a 'good' thing.

Of course, Sean, the man she is paired up with, is also trying to convince her of this "fact" of life. With his cute accent and puppy-dog portrayal of the character, David O'Hara can't fail to catch Hollywood's attention, not to mention that of the thousands of teen-age girls who are going to start planning fantasy trips to Ireland because of his charms. Not only does he give American women a reason to sigh, but he gives Marcy a reason to question her past beliefs.

The Irish setting of "The Matchmaker" is gorgeous, and the story entertaining. While this is not Academy Award material, nor an apparent Blockbuster hit, it is fun - a movie seemingly made for pure entertainment, which accomplishes that goal nicely.