Full Frontal (film)


Full Frontal is a 2002 film by Steven Soderbergh about a day in the life of a handful of characters in Hollywood. It stars Catherine Keener, Blair Underwood, David Duchovny, Julia Roberts, Mary McCormack, Nicky Katt, Brad Pitt, and David Hyde Pierce. The film was shot on digital video using the Canon XL-1s in under a month. The film blurs the line between what is real and what is fiction in its depiction of a film within a film.

Cast

The film was announced in 2001 and Catherine Keener was the first actor attached to the project, named How to Survive a Hotel Room Fire. It was billed by Miramax as "an unofficial sequel of sorts" to Sex, Lies, and Videotape. In October, Julia Roberts, David Hyde Pierce, and David Duchovny were announced as leads in the project, and after the September 11 attacks, the film title was changed to The Art of Negotiating a Turn.
After a phone call with Harvey Weinstein because he did not like the new movie title, Soderbergh suggested the title Full Frontal. The production on the film began on November 6, 2001.

Release

Full Frontal had a limited release in the United States on August 2, 2002, opening in 208 theaters, and earning $739,834 its first weekend. The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 23, 2003, and failed to reach the Top 10. It received negative reviews from critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 38% based on reviews from 142 critics, with the site's consensus: "An confusing movie made worse by the poor camera work."
Writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert called Full Frontal "a film so amateurish that only the professionalism of some of the actors makes it watchable". Richard Roeper also gave the film a poor review, writing that it was "like the 'Special Features' disc of the DVD without the original movie". USA Today gave the film three out of four stars, recommending it for its "humor and talented cast".