![]() This relationship hits the rocks during this period when Howard is sweating over basketball scores he’s bet big on and whether or not he’ll ever get the big gem back. Of course, Howard has a woman on the side, Julia (Julia Fox), a nice young lady who - what else? - works at his jewelry store and for whom he provides an apartment. His wife Dinah (Idina Menzel), who well knows how to deal with her husband, is naturally furious. What should be a calm night out for the Ratner family on the occasion of a school theater presentation morphs into an insane set of events that finds Howard locked nude in the trunk of a car. ![]() The writers have concocted any number of outrageous incidents that, in fact, feel real and not gags invented just to be toppers. For his part, however, Howard nearly always has an angle, another card to play - what’s a new day without a fresh fire to put out? Of course, Howard doesn’t get his valued piece of rock back when he expects it, and this is just the beginning of promises not met, debts remaining unpaid, lies mounting to cover the shortcomings and everyone becoming angrier and angrier. The Safdies plunge the audience into the deep end of this world, and it’s easy to be both overwhelmed and seriously put off by the vulgarity of it everyone is brash, it’s the norm for promises and expectations not to be met, feverish yelling is the accepted mode of communication and no day is complete without a new unwelcome incident. Having just acquired it and against his better instincts, Howard lets one of his most valued customers, basketball titan Kevin Garnett, borrow the piece, a misjudgment that sets in motion no end of crises and misfortune. In a brief Ethiopian-set prologue, a football-sized piece of rock is extracted from a mine, and numerous embedded gems are clearly of significant value. On the other hand, some people get off on this, and for Howard it’s the core of his existence. Many will agree that this is Sandler’s best performance, and the Safdies will finally move from the fringes of the commercial film scene to somewhere closer to the center. It’s thus a tribute to writer-directors Josh and Benny Safdie and Adam Sandler, who plays the part, that Uncut Gems emerges as a real gem itself, a sparkling comedy-drama about a compulsive gambler and risk-taker who never knows when to quit. The question immediately becomes whether this frantic, sweaty, manic, disorganized, unreliable and frequently desperate middle-aged man will emerge as a figure of revulsion or fascination to the audience. “I think you are the most annoying person on the planet,” someone remarks to Howard Ratner, a madly obnoxious wheeler-dealer in New York’s diamond district.
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