Terry Kinney directs Alan Alda and Matthew Broderick in upbeat, light-hearted comedy – 3 stars ***

By W. H. Bourne

HOLLYWOOD, CA (Hollywood Today) 7/3/08 – “I set up a meeting with Matthew Broderick after we had sent him a script,” says ‘Diminished Capacity’ director Terry Kinney. “He’s very shy, but he walked in, sat down and said simply, ‘You don’t have to sell me. I want to do it.’”

“Matthew became the springboard from which the rest of the cast followed. Alan Alda’s agent called me about him, and we met at a restaurant. Before I met with Alan, I wasn’t sure he was the best guy, but he transformed himself for this role. He owned something from his deepest fears, regrets and joys. He was a re-invention of himself every day.”

“The scene that stands out in my mind was between Alan and Matthew in a bathroom,” says Kinney. “Alan’s dementia kicks into high gear. He’s standing there looking at his hand with the fistful of money he got for the baseball card, but you can see he doesn’t understand what’s happened. That’s a small scene, but Alan was so prepared and made it so touching.”

“We were aware we were doing a comedy that involves a very serious subject,” says Kinney. “We never wanted to poke fun at a serious illness that involves forgetting our past or our present. We wanted to give it all the heart that we could.”

“We had two central characters with similar afflictions trying to perform a simple Laurel and Hardy-type task,” says Kinney. “They had to remember to do one thing. Take a baseball card to a show and sell it. And, they can’t even do that right. It was a balancing act of humor and true pathos.”

Kinney convinced his Steppenwolf Films partners Jeff Perry and Gary Sinise and his financial partner Tim Evans to take a chance on novelist Sherwood Kiraly’s early script. “Tim and I raised money to develop properties and paid Sherwood to write endless drafts,” says Kinney. “We eventually optioned the rights and always planned for this to be our flagship film.”

“This film was important to me because I had to keep remembering enthusiasm and optimism,” says Kinney. “I wanted that energy to inform the people watching it and wanted the characters to be resilient; to trust what is right in front of you; to believe in where you come from, to know you can go home again and remember who loves you, and choose your own ending for yourself.”

‘Diminished Capacity’ is sure to please the kid and collector in everyone. It has an amazing cast with Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, Virginia Madsen, Dylan Baker, and Bobby Cannavale.

‘Diminished Capacity’
Running Time: 1 hr. 32 min.
Limited Release Date: July 4, 2008 (USA)
Not Rated.
Distributor: IFC Films (USA)