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Barcelona concerns itself with Ted (Taylor Nichols) and Fred (Chris Eigeman) a pair of Midwest cousins with a fairly thorny family history (mostly predicated on Fred's habit of "borrowing" money and then not repaying it back, and of concocting amusing lies about Ted to tell any girls interested in his cousin). Ted, a salesman from Chicago, has been in the titular city for some time as the film opens when Fred, a self-proclaimed "advance man for the Sixth Fleet" arrives in town needing a place to crash. The introverted and bookish Ted, who surrounds himself with self-help literature and is prone to dancing to big band music while reading the Holy Bible (!), falls back into familiar patterns of argument and exasperation with the more brash and outgoing Fred. Soon the pair is dealing not only with their individual reputations, but their status as unwanted outsiders in a climate increasingly unfriendly towards Americans. All this while they attempt to woo the local trade-show girls.

Nichols and Eigeman are a pair of delightful character actors who were part of the ensemble in Metropolitan and just about the only ones to parlay their debuts there into long-running careers. Eigeman was also in Kicking and Screaming and the sweet, offbeat and short-lived late ‘90s ABC sitcom "it's like, you know . . ." and he and Nichols between them have guested on seemingly half of the Big 4 networks' series in the last 15 years. Eigeman has the essence of the eternal man-child mixed in with his persona of the sharpest guy in the room while Nichols convincingly captures the "good-guy" nebbish who seems so quiet yet tightly wound, he's liable to burst into violence. Not sure if he ever has in any roles but the signs are definitely there. They could have had quite the fruitful career as the mismatched odd couple, but I am thankful they didn't pull a Sutherland/Gould post-M*A*S*H and reunite for increasingly less worthy projects. They are perfectly at home with Stillman's dialogue and one could be forgiven for thinking the auteur created them along with the story.

Where his first and third films felt like true ensembles, particularly where the male and female interactions were concerned, Barcelona doesn't have any character depth beyond the two leads. This is particularly humbling to observe when one of the female leads is Mira Sorvino, only a year before she won the Oscar for her performance in Mighty Aphrodite. She and Bergen seem, well, bland, not particularly in their performances but in the women they are playing, as if Stillman couldn't quite them to be more than tertiary outlines. Both are involved with Ramone, a local political writer for a major newspaper, and a large plot of the hinges on just how sincere the women are in their affections for the cousins. Stillman deserves points for focusing on the political as well as the personal and for bringing the real world threat of violence into what could have been just a smart, wounded love story. But an unexpected plot twist about two-thirds of the way in helps to further the romantic entanglements more than it provides a push towards deeper consideration of the anti-American, anti-military, and anti-capitalist anger with which Stillman surrounds the characters.

If I sound unduly harsh on Barcelona, it's only because I compare it to two great films and it is "merely" a good film. Watching Metropolitan or Disco, I feel like hugging myself with delight over how well crafted the characters are, how individual yet recognizable they seem, and how the film is happy to observe and follow along wherever their journeys may take them. As sunny and lush as Barcelona is (cinematographer John Thomas has done all of Stillman's films as well as a large part of the Sex and the City oeuvre, including both films), it ultimately feels slightly distant and remote, as if even its writer/director wasn't sure what kind of happy ending he was striving towards. The final moments are abrupt and unfocused and leave one with the sense that more (or perhaps less) needed to be said.

Next time: This 1992 release was both prequel and sequel to the television show it came from, a fact that's only slightly less confusing than the film itself.

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