Jake (J.D. Shapiro) looks and talks like Bruno Kirby’s younger brother. Rock (William Dozier) looks like McGuyver but has the brains of a kumquat. The only thing these two goons have in common is the same ex-wife, Margo. Surprisingly, director Shapiro has managed to squeeze a consistently silly, if exhausting, feature film from this sitcom sounding, single joke premise. This is largely because he shamelessly borrows a thematic page — well, okay, most of the book — from “The Odd Couple.” After Margo leaves him, at Jake’s urging, Rock moves in with his ex-wife’s other ex-husband and slowly proceeds to drive his shell-shocked host insane. Perversely, he also becomes Jake’s best friend, which the latter discovers only after he’s driven Rock out of the house. Lonely and depressed, Jake shuns a reconciliation offer from his ex-girlfriend, choosing instead to try to convince his pal to move back in again. It’s not the “buddy movie” plot that makes or breaks “We Married Margo,” but rather the film’s unique editing style; a visual reincarnation of the non-stop rat-a-tat punchlines of an old vaudeville routine. The film combines this abundance of hit and miss non sequiturs — think “The Family Guy” on speed — with a slam-bang collection of quick-cut scenes that make a “Seinfeld” episode seem languid. Throw in a highly self-aware parade of celebrity cameos, including Kevin Bacon, Cindy Crawford, Tom Arnold, and the late golfer Payne Stewart, to name a few, and you’ve got a film that’s more star-studded than the rest of the Slamdance films combined.
All this flash eventually wears thin, however, as the steady stream of rapid-fire, ba-da-bing! intercutting leaves the audience totally burnt out after about thirty minutes. Even in this MTV age of information overload and short attention spans, people still need an occasional breather. Unfortunately, none is forthcoming. As a result, what starts out as an often wildly hysterical comic romp winds up with its audience exhausted and panting harder than Margo’s over-used divorce lawyer.
