Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? is an unconventional film about unconventional people. It's not quite as hilarious as Jaglom's previous film Sitting Ducks, but it has much more heart.
We establish Zee's character perfectly from exactly the second scene where her husband is leaving her. She is softly trying to bargain with him about when he leaves, and when he doesn't bite, she calmly takes items from the suitcase he is packing and puts them back in the drawers. He, without missing a beat, then puts them back in the suitcase. It's a scene reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy bit, but we can see that Zee lives in her own little world.
Eli, her soon-to-be lover, is less established, despite perhaps having more screentime. But then, Zee is such a scene thief that he has little to do but react, and he does so beautifully. Despite all of the one-liners he spouts, his role in the film is really as the straight man to Zee's comic.
The film is diverted from the main plot for a few minutes early on, setting up two characters who do not appear again for another 45 minutes, and in the intervening time we've forgotten about them. But when they do reappear, what happens next is so logical and predictable that we understand the earlier diversion. And then the film takes yet *more* information thrown at us earlier and throws the audience a massive, unpredictable curveball that ties up the story in one minute in a way that most films would take ten. Jaglom was never better as a storyteller than he was in Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?.
We establish Zee's character perfectly from exactly the second scene where her husband is leaving her. She is softly trying to bargain with him about when he leaves, and when he doesn't bite, she calmly takes items from the suitcase he is packing and puts them back in the drawers. He, without missing a beat, then puts them back in the suitcase. It's a scene reminiscent of a Laurel and Hardy bit, but we can see that Zee lives in her own little world.
Eli, her soon-to-be lover, is less established, despite perhaps having more screentime. But then, Zee is such a scene thief that he has little to do but react, and he does so beautifully. Despite all of the one-liners he spouts, his role in the film is really as the straight man to Zee's comic.
The film is diverted from the main plot for a few minutes early on, setting up two characters who do not appear again for another 45 minutes, and in the intervening time we've forgotten about them. But when they do reappear, what happens next is so logical and predictable that we understand the earlier diversion. And then the film takes yet *more* information thrown at us earlier and throws the audience a massive, unpredictable curveball that ties up the story in one minute in a way that most films would take ten. Jaglom was never better as a storyteller than he was in Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?.