Easy Six (2003)

Directed by: Chris Iovenko | 90 minutes | drama, comedy | Actors: Julian Sands, Alex Sol, Ruth Williamson, John Savage, Donald Freed, Kyle Howard, Anel Lopez Gorham, Lorna Scott, Katharine Towne, James Wellington, Stuart D. Johnson, Wayne Grace, James Belushi, Fisher Stevens, Harry Karp

In ‘Easy Six’, actor Julian Sands returns to Las Vegas. This time not as the intimidating pimp Yuri he played in ‘Leaving Las Vegas’, but as Professor Packard Schmidt, who proves his academic level with a sharp English accent and a chilling dullness. No wonder students stay away from his classes en masse. To relax, Schmidt goes to Las Vegas, with the excuse that a conference about the British poet Milton is taking place there. His colleague and friend Frank Iverson (John Savage) asks Schmidt to visit his daughter Sally, who is studying in Las Vegas. Iverson himself can no longer contact her.

Once in Las Vegas, Sally (Katherine Towne, daughter of ‘Chinatown’ screenwriter Robert Towne) turns out to be doing a lot more than studying. Luckily, because Sally was once his student, and he’s had a soft spot for her ever since. In addition, the film does everything it can to make you believe that the ‘conference’ that Schmidt attends is just a cheap excuse for academics to make Las Vegas unsafe. (The room in which Milton’s work is discussed appears to have been rented from a couple of pole dancers.) ‘Easy Six’ is a comedy. The film tries to achieve this by having Schmidt recite a Shakespearean sonnet to a roommate of Sally and by putting on an Elvis wig by Jim Belushi. And oh yes: Schmidt, that crazy professor, makes unsavory jokes.

The ‘love’ for Sally, however, is comical, which immediately bubbles up in Schmidt’s reunion: his social intelligence drops to zero as a result. Because love makes you blind? Either way, it leads to one of the less passionately portrayed sex scenes in recent movie history and a hilariously implausible marriage proposal. Nothing in ‘Easy Six’ is as incredible, incidentally, as Frank Iverson. Whether as a father, as a friend of Schmidt’s or as what-he-does-exactly in college, with his shorts and Hawaiian shirts, he comes across as a crazy doll with batteries in the back and a key in the head. Fortunately, Elvis is still there, to eventually save the world.