Hi! I’m a traffic sign. And I’ve made a movie.

Imagine a city in neons and pastels. A city of choreographed lawn sprinklers, bizarre architecture, and flying hot dog stands. A city where – at any given restaurant – you’ll find at least one supermodel recovering from a nose job, and where the motorists on the freeway drive heavily-armed. It is, as William Shakespeare put it, “this other eden, demiparadise, this precious stone set in the silver sea, this earth, this realm, this… Los Angeles.”

Harris Telemacher has it good. He’s a weatherman in L.A. – which means he has the easiest job in the world short of village idiot (in all honesty, some would argue that they’re the same). He’s handsome, affluent, and educated enough to freely paraphrase Shakespeare when the mood strikes him.

Of course, he has his fair share of problems. His wife is cheating on him with his agent, the bubbly and brainless girl at the hipster clothing store keeps hitting on him, he’s had seven heart attacks (all imagined), and life is generally boring. Not to mention that one of the Freeway Condition signs has started offering him advice in the form of cryptic riddles.

His life is about to take a turn for the decidedly strange (and – most would argue – better) when he meets the quirky London Times reporter Sara McDowel.

“For my part, I don’t lie in’t, yet it is mine…”

Written by Steve Martin, L.A. Story is a rare bird on earth – a romantic comedy that succeeds at being both highly romantic and giddily silly. Within the first seconds of the movie, reality is thrown out of the window in favor of something better. This is a Green World – a world where any rule can be suspended for as long as it takes to set things right.

And there’s a lot to be set right. While his relationship to his wife Trudi is on the rocks, he finds himself involved in a pointless frolic with the lovely-yet-emptyheaded SanDeE* (don’t blame me, that’s the way she spells it) who only succeeds in making him feel even more out of it than he already did. The only joys left in his life are his performance art (rollerskating through art museums) and showing Sara around the town.

“The producer said you needed more cleavage, so, hey presto!”

The absolute absurdity of Martin’s script is sold by the deadpan delivery of the entire ensemble. Martin himself plays a deadpan to the hilt – taking the most bizarre things in stride, because they’re all part of life in L.A. Marilu Henner’s status-and-fashion obsessed Trudi has L.A. in her blood. Even SanDeE* (played by a very young and bouncy Sarah Jessica Parker) is a perfect product of her environment – shallow, gum-popping and foundationless, yet truly happy with herself. They’ve lived this life so long that the inherently bizarre has become commonplace.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, SanDeE* is a fairly harmless person (and fun to watch) – and Telemacher doesn’t hate life in L.A., he just looks at it with a somewhat cynical sense of humor. His one problem, in fact, is finding somebody who shares that sense of humor. And It’s Sara who shares that sense, seeing L.A. for what it is – a place where “no one is looking to the outside” for advice on how to live their lives.

“If only I had some sort of sign…”

In the end, that’s what makes L.A. Story work. While Martin has crafted an amazing satire of life in the City of Angels, he has also crafted a love letter to the city – all of its strangeness, its quirks and odd characters. And it is that atmosphere that not only makes the comedy work, but the romance as well. After all, perhaps the best place for a magical romance to begin is in a city where the rest of the world’s rules don’t apply. As a matter of fact, it has to start there – for as Telemacher points out, “There is someone for everyone, even if you need a pickaxe, a compass, and night-goggles to find them.”