Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Messing magnificent in "Starter Wife"

Debra Messing reportedly was determined to exorcise any trace of her "Will & Grace" character Grace Adler from her persona while shooting her mostly inspired (if a bit transparently shallow) new six-hour USA Network miniseries "The Starter Wife," and darned if she doesn't pull it off.

Messing is magnetic and alluring in the adaptation of Gigi Levangie Grazer's best-selling novel inspired by her split -- temporary, as it turned out -- from high-powered Hollywood hubby Brian Grazer. The mini is about being shunted aside for a newer, blonder piece of eye candy and having to dig deep to find one's essence once the parties stop and the high-powered life itself divorces you. Messing is more than up to the task of bringing this social death to life, effectively erasing any memory of that job she used to have on that NBC comedy, whatever it was called.

"Wife" is entertaining and bitingly irreverent, at once sweet and sour. It ropes you in because Messing is so adept at making us like her neurotic personage. If there is an abiding problem with the mini (and this isn't insignificant), it's that it actually is based on something of a flawed premise. It isn't a riches-to-rags story so much as a riches-to-riches. See, after Molly Kagan's (Messing) little weasel of a husband, Kenny (nice work from Peter Jacobson), dumps her to take up with young blonde bimbette Shoshanna (Trilby Glover), she isn't forced to take her daughter and share a one-bedroom apartment in Alhambra. She's allowed to stay in the beachfront Malibu Colony estate of a friend in secret rehab. So forget down-and-out; this is down-and-up.

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