L.A. Story

L.A. Story (1991) — watch online the romantic comedy-fantasy written by and starring Steve Martin, directed by Mick Jackson. Sarah Jessica Parker plays a fizzy local girl, Richard E. Grant the stiff English boyfriend, and Patrick Stewart turns up briefly as a maître d' with the power of a gatekeeper god.

Harris K. Telemacher is a TV weatherman in a city where the weather never changes. His relationship is stuck, his career is meaningless, and then a freeway sign starts sending him messages. The sign points him toward Sara — a visiting British journalist played by Victoria Tennant — and, through a sequence of only-in-L.A. absurdities, Harris starts paying attention to his own life for the first time. Martin satirizes the city he clearly loves: restaurants with three-month waiting lists, bumper-to-bumper traffic as a form of meditation, and people who talk about inner journeys while cutting each other off on the freeway.

It sits in a small genre of films that mock a place and serenade it at the same time. The talking billboard is a better life coach than anyone with a pulse in the story. Stream L.A. Story (1991) online on iFILM.