Human Nature (2001)
I almost forgot to mention this one! Thanks to Netflix for notifying me they'd received it.
A kooky little number this. If you liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, or one of the many other Charlie Kaufmann films, you'll like this one also.
The movie tracks the three people and the bizarre four-way love triangle they form. It's hard to say who the story follows most, or who it's centered on, they're so intertwined.
Patricia Arquette plays a Lila, woman with gobs of excess body hair. Worse than imaginable in the "that's not a sweater" on the beach joke. She shaves and uses depilatories to uncover the unsightly hair until she decides to give in to who she is, and moves to the forest.
Rhys Ifans plays Puff, a man whose father stole him away to the forest to raise him as an ape. Rhys we remember as the soccer-player turned kicker in The Replacements, who nearly throws the game in the end.
Tim Robbins is later introduced as Dr. Nathan Bronfman, a timid behavioral scientist who's trying to overcome the treatment of his parents by teaching mice proper table manners. It's the mice we actually open the movie with, but that's leading us into one of the many sideways and backwards flashes.
The movie is a telling of the tale that leads to Lily's incarceration for the murder of Nathan, with interjections from Puff's congressional testimony, and Nathan's tale-telling the afterlife.
A twisty tale takes place as Lily becomes a best-selling nature author, and decides to reintegrate herself into human society. She's set up on a blind-date with Nathan (by Rosie Perez), and while on a nature hike they find Puff in the forest. Nathan captures Puff (not yet named) and decides to teach him proper table manners.
The fourth side of the love triangle is Nathan's assistant Gabrielle, played by Miranda Otto (who would later play the girl hero Eowyn in a couple Lord of the Rings movies, which I actually saw first...my own little flashback...), who helps train Puff. She has a thing for Nathan, but Puff has a thing for her, who she later sides with. She, of course, gets in the way of the fast-budding relationship between Nathan and Lily, too.
These four characters bring us humorous twists on human nature and the seven deadly sins.