Love, Sex & Missed Connections
With the Grand Entertainment Group, Writer and lead Kenny Stevenson, director Eric Kissack and producer Lisa Rudin present, what is described as "the story of a guy named Neal. Neal's been trying to get over a traumatic break up with his ex-girlfriend by doing what anyone would do... tricking women on the Internet. Neal's plan is going amazingly well, until he meets Jane, who just may be as devious as he is."
The central conceit being that Neal's reprobate friends, in order to cheer him up, hatch a plan to get him laid. This involves having him reply to 'Missed connection' posts on a Craigslist-like site, showing up, observing the woman in question waiting for her mystery man and when he, obviously, doesn't show up, swooping in to seal the deal. Remarkably it works until he finds Jane, the woman with the blue shoes, out there gaming the system and the two become drawn together.
It's a strong enough set up on which to hang a series of hilarious interactions between Neal and his friends, Neal and the women, Neal and his family and Neal and his Ex. The film survives on the strength of the script and the likeability of the performers.
Everyone involved in the production has a history in comedy from the Director editing Role Models and the Producer working with Bill Maher and Sasha Baron Cohen to almost everyone in the cast being in one comedy theatre group or other, mainly the Groundlings, and this is my main reason for wanting you to see this film. It's really funny. I know this sounds like a stupid and even offensive point to make but they even bother to make the women funny. Most Rom-Coms the Women are victims of supposed male charm, looks or apparent superiority, slaves to their emotions and, surprisingly, either dull or, worse, cutesy. This is even true when the film is written by a woman!
Not so with Love, Sex & Missed Connections, despite what, on the surface, may start out as a fairly misogynistic premise, the main two women in the film, played by, the wife of the lead, Dorien Davies and Sami Klein are written and performed as interesting, funny, complex and different. It's refreshing.
While there's nothing particularly new about the male roles in the film, again think Office Space or The Hangover, they are still well observed and played by charismatic, funny actors (Shane Elliot, Alex Enriquez, Abe Smith and Scott Beehner) who you enjoy spending time with.
Also, the film doesn't say a whole lot of anything new about relationships or the battle of the sexes, anymore than the next Tom Cruise movie will say anything new about being an upright, respectable, everyman, super spy with a ready quip and neat fighting abilities but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be watched and enjoyed. The central premise is one you haven't heard of before and there are some wonderful little, subtle moments in the film that really make it something different. The observation that, when depressed, the character makes the life changing move of walking everywhere, certainly in LA, feels like a novel little detail in the movie.
Funny, charming, well put together and worth a watch! It's the Office Space for the Internet dating generation
The film has won two handfuls of awards from various film festivals FIND OUT MORE HERE
and is available on DVD from Amazon
The film will be available to Pre-Order on iTunes: 11/01/2013
AND Available on the following platforms: 11/12/2013
Amazon Instant Video
Google Play
YouTube Movies
iTunes
PlayStation
and VUDU
The Dilemma - 23rd June 2011
Well yes, ok, some of those are fair points, for example it does swing violently all over the place in terms of mood with one minute being a drama, one minute being a farce and next moment being some sort of ridiculous lads comedy but for anyone who saw Vince Vaughn's film The Break Up you'll know that the ones where he has input on the idea, mainly writing or producing, usually seem genuinely interested in the idea of relationships, not in the usual 'boy meets girl' but what happens once boy has met girl, got together and the real challenges start.
Financially, for Vaughn, these have been good waters to tread but, like we have learnt, a films take is no indication of actually how good the film is and when it comes to that he has had varying degrees of success with this concept over his past few films, from the very good (The Break Up) to the 'how did so many right people get something so horribly wrong' (Couples Retreat). He has dealt with break ups, how do couples who are great together privately deal with their dutso families, what happens when another couples mooted break up effects 3 other couples and now the Dilemma which can be boiled down to what happens when one member of two great couples finds out that his friends wife is cheating on him?
Well next to the Break Up this is the second best film of this type that Vaughn has attempted, there is quite a drop off but thankfully Four Christmases and Couples Retreat this is not. Yes some of the jokes and slapstick maybe a bit broad but so was a lot of The Break Up and I honestly always appreciate the attempt to do something more than just the generic rom-com.
Proving, if proof was ever needed, that Ron Howard has absolutely no style of directing what-so-ever, this film could have been directed by generic-blockbuster-comedy-director number 5 and you wouldn't know the difference and while I applaud Vaughn attempting to work with lots of different people each time I am not sure how well this cast gelled together. Individually they were all fine but I am not sure I can handle Winona Ryder anymore, she's just weird.
He may have the success rate of late era Woody Allen, with more misses than hits but I, for one, am willing to allow him to mine the concept of all the possibilities of 'what happens once you're with someone' for as long as he likes and with all the different cast/director combos he can think of because as almost all of The Break Up and parts of The Dilemma show somewhere in his rapid fire delivery is some really good ideas just waiting to be given some form and structure and you never know, it might happen again yet.
6 out of 10 bagels confused as doughnuts and the eater gets a slightly disappointing but not unpleasant experience.
Points from the Wife 6.5 out of 10
How Do You Know - 24th March 2011
if 30 minutes into it you want to yank your own eyeballs out and eat them to save you from this sort of floundering mess in the future.
What is so completely shocking about this amateurish weak arse dribble of a film is that while Reese Witherspoon is never top of my list, she's not exactly atrocious and almost everyone else involved in this film has done much much better and will probably do much better again, we can only hope.
Yes once in a while Paul Rudd will stumble into a howler or two ("I could never be your woman" anyone?), Owen Wilson faltered his steady stream of watchable, enjoyable romps with Marley & Me and even the sheen has slightly faded on old Mr.Nicholson after The Bucket List (although his resume is still extraordinarily respectable and lacking the massive Blunders of pears De Niro and Pacino) and yet what were the chances that all four of these established Hollywood actors would show up in one almighty blunder? How would I know! I can only imagine that the usually reliable James L Brooks roofied them all, filmed them all engaging in lurid acts with a penguin and has it hanging over their heads.
The plot is utterly redundant, tedious and devoid of laughs. Basically Reese Witherspoon can no longer play softball or something and instead of just getting one of those sports-personality endorsement deals for a shoe or something, decides instead to shack up with air-headed, insensitive, womaniser Wilson and is then hideously shocked and surprised when it continually doesn't work out. One to many softballs in the face apparently.
On the other end of the banality spectrum there is Rudd and his father Nicholson. Rudd runs Nicholson's company, what that is we are never told or fully explained but the company is being investigated, again for what, no one really ever tells us that either. Rudd, being head of said company, is therefor in the firing line but we never really see this either, we are just told it and so he has plenty of time on his hands to wander about while Nicholson occasionally shows up to rain a little more on hapless Rudd's parade with little to no information other than it's bad news and Rudd should panic. Rudd is never once interviewed by the IRS or the Feds or anyone and the whole strand of the narrative seems unnecessarily sloppy, confusing and pointless. What is even more frustrating is the storyline is never entirely or satisfactorily concluded which makes you leave the cinema even more dumbfounded and gobsmacked that you sat through the whole sorry disaster to begin with.
Rudd and Witherspoon contrive to meet on the worst day both of them are having and in a very not-very-cute "meet-cute" Rudd decides he likes the gravestone chinned Witherspoon and rather than anything resembling hilarity or romance ensuing we spend the rest of the film knowing they'll get together but have to watch two hours of worthless and pitiful crap where the only obstacle to their groinal happiness is the never faithful and imbecilic Wilson and the fact that Witherspoon continues to claim they are boyfriend and girlfriend, despite her spending all her time with Rudd and hardly any with him!
The whole thing is comparable to being flogged with chicken wire while a dwarf anally batters you with a fence post and at least in that scenario the fence post has a point.
All of this twatting about would probably be bearable if the whole film didn't look like it was put together by the same team that put together the sets for televised puppet shows in the 50s. Considering the pedigree of it's director, Mr. James L Brooks, it looks like he is trying to take tips from the people who make daytime soaps in which evil twin brothers steal the ruby of eternal life from the nuns only to find out the girl he had a crush on in high school is really his aunt.
So slam bad writing and bad directing together with impossibly poor production values and a cast who all look like they could do with a long lie down, some strong drugs or a damn good talking to and you have this years worst romantic comedy so far, mainly because it's neither romantic nor at all funny in any way at all. The bit in the trailer about the lamp is the best bit in the film and it's funnier in the trailer.
Unfortunately a sad day for all involved, Witherspoon will take this in her stride, she's used to this sort of mindless, inconsequential project that's not unlike being forced to smell the flecks from big foot's arse hair but the rest of them, not unlike actors thinking that working with Woody Allen now is still something to be happy about, need to read the script closer in future, it's only worth doing if it's any good.
Next up Owen Wilson works with Woody Allen (I slap my head with despair).
2 out of 10 sneezes into a salad that's already glazed liberally with giraffe shit
Points from The Wife 2 out of 10
Going The Distance - 4th December 2010
I finish some computer time, the misses fancies a movie, Going The Distance looks harmless enough and I think, eh! what the hey... why not put it on. Big MISTAKE.
Now this is not going to be some big angry rant about how this movie was so abysmal it made me want to regurgitate my spine and then gnaw on it in sheer annoyance and bile filled rage because, truth be told, although this is an enormously tedious slice of beige, it didn't get me angry, it didn't make me anxious, it didn't get under my skin, annoy me, amuse me or engage me and neither did it send me to sleep, although the Wife snoozed a bit through it; It just made me sit there, blank, slack jawed, everything vacant, staring at the screen not able to believe that a usually fairly likable cast with a possibly interesting premise made such a badly made, badly paced, poorly executed, terribly written, atrociously performed, shockingly edited and downright tediously below average movie.
You know how they say that if you took infinite monkeys and put them on infinite typewriters then eventually you'd get the works of Shakespeare? Well put one half blind monkey who is more fascinated with his own genitalia in front of an etch-a-sketch for 5 minutes and you'd get a more film-able script.
I don't know if it's because I have seen way too many of these or if this one just was unbelievably lazy but it was just so boring, bland, obvious, slow and there wasn't one single attempt made to break with the tried, tested and failed more than succeeded (surely!) method of making Rom-Coms.
I honestly believe that good, well made, unpretentious, not too formulaic, genuinely funny, well performed, well observed and ambitious romantic comedies can be counted on about one and a half hands and would somewhere along the line include the names Harry, Sally and Annie Hall.
So I know that just by beginning one that the odds are against me about 99 to 1 but even so, am I wrong to expect a little more than a title that sounds it was thought up, way in advance, by a committee thinking they were being witty... a witty committee if you will, the comically slobby and unbelievable male best friends, preferably one with a humourous fetish, the 'ignore him, sleep with this handsome guy!' shrewish, single or slutty female best friends, the montages round Central Park, the kitsch 50s diner date, the referencing of a retro film, band or video game (or all three), a soundtrack featuring choice picks from "Now that's what I call sounds from the sucky rom-coms pt. 34 - generic yet now widely acceptable 80s pop ballads', the fake tanning scene (in every movie now, right?), the service personnel that, because you say you're in love with a woman in a silly, frantic way will let you do just about anything to get to her, despite heightened security everywhere and the obligatory mischievous kid in a dysfunctional family routine. I am sure I am missing 100 other cliches but I am too tired right now and too just deadened by this whole experience that I can't really be bothered to write for much longer.
There are really no words, I could talk about how Justin Long is more wooden in this film than a heavy mahogany sculpture of a red wood but I don't have the effort as the movie sapped my will to live, I could say how Drew Barrymore is unappealing, badly dressed and made up and keeps looking like she's going to f'ing crack up every 30 seconds but it would involve me somewhere, along the line, caring and I could even go on that for a big studio flick it has more continuity and editing errors than it has intentional laughs and unfortunately the continuity errors didn't cause any unintentional merriment either.
Well I can no longer muster the energy to even sum it up, such is level to which this film reached into my brain and erased anything useful in there and replaced it with a simple pudding-like substance.
1 out of 10 because I can't give it 0 as that is reserved for movies with any sort of pop icon in them.
Points from The Wife - 1 out of 10
Love and Other Drugs - 27th November 2010
It starts as a perfectly ok, throw-away, sort-of-comedy about a guy, played by werewolf faced, bland-as toast, recently buffed up for an action movie based on a video-game, Jake Gyllenhaal who has the gift of the gab, sells people junk they don't need, be it stereos or pharmaceuticals and sleeps with every implausibly attractive woman he comes across in a variety of forehead slappingly predictable and obvious sex scenes.
Then he meets Anne Hathaway's dungaree wearing fantasy woman who seemingly spends all day not working very hard at a crappy little cafe or lounging about in hardly any clothing arranging her, very trendy, polaroid pictures into hipster art in a loft apartment that would make Van Gogh audibly orgasm. She of course, calls him on his crap in a sassy and flirtatious way before explaining to him that all she wants is what he wants, a series of meaningless sexual conquests. Cue a never ending string of fairly graphically naked sex scenes which have little or nothing to do with much except blotting out the apparent oh-so-tragic pain of being them, which, in Gyllenhaal's case means making hundreds of thousands of dollars being number one sales man of, surely-sells-itself, boner pill Viagra and in Hathaway's case having to swan about doing absolutely nothing all day apart from repeatedly showing your breasts and fiddling with a photo.
So far so meh! and not even an over active, man please just loose weight, supporting role from Mr.Comic Relief himself, Oliver Platt could really elevate it much above, weirdly sexually graphic but not very distracting fluff.
Then somewhere along the line we realise oh no! Hathaway's got a disease! Hathaway has Parkinson's! She doesn't want to get close to anyone because she may, one day, need help from that person and oooh noooo she doesn't want to be a burden to anyone because she's so good and volunteers to go with old people up to Canada to get cheap meds and ahhhh she's been down this road with previous men, including, of course, Gyllenhaal's arch pharmaceutical rep rival and whinge, moan, whinge, moan, cry, moan... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
BANG! wake up!
Sorry about that but basically after a few more sex scenes, a break up, another handful of snore inducing sex scenes (including an obligatory one through fogged up, rain dripped glass), Hathaway doing her best shaky hands, I have Parkinson's really! routine and a montage of Gyllenhaal not wanting to accept her fate and so desperately trying to find a cure, followed by another smattering of self-absorbed self destruction with some moping, a ridiculous, I have never told anyone this before because I used to hide my depth behind my abundant shallowness, declaration of love which is followed by another break up and then some more make-up sex, all the time accompanied or interrupted by a not-very-funny sidekick turn by someone who is meant to be Gyllenhaal's brother but looks like a curly haired, fatter and less funny Jack Black, they finally decide, after Jake rides up next to Anne's bus in his porsche, stops the bus, gets on and declares more love while the old folks comically egg her on to just go for it, to be in love and stay together. The End..... and BREATHE!
As if my run on sentence just then didn't just prove that I couldn't get on board with this turgid, tedious, predictable arse belch of a film enough, then let me explain:
On the surface this attempts to be a strictly adult take (look there's nudity and swearing!) on the tale of the selfish philanderer who finds the woman of his dreams and despite her medical condition becomes the man he truly is by falling in love with her and pledging to take care of her because really, medical condition or not, we all need taking care of, even Jake 'oh look I am naked again, this work out regime wasn't wasted then' Gyllenhaal. Ladle in, what should've been, a decent bit of satire about the drug companies and health care in America and, especially timing wise, after the big health care debacle in the States, you'd have a hit rom-com/drama on your hands that will appeal to all women from 25 to 85.
The trouble is it is none of those things and less.
Much like Gyllenhaal's character apparently finds depth by the end of the film (why because he stops selling drugs and decides to go back to what his hugely over privileged family want him to do and go to medical school while also lazing about on Anne Hathaway??), so the film was meant to have become deep I suppose but much as, I suspect, three years down the line, ol' Jake, bored with Hathaway's enormous gob and 17 rows of perfect white gnashers, will scarper back to loose women and the thrill of the sell, so this film's supposed point never really holds any truth and it all ends up being a fairly mundane re-tread of every 'I love someone with a disease' movie.
We learn nothing, nothing changes and we never really grow to care about these perfect people and their perfect hair. All that happens is we are secretly pelted with weak cliches and flimsy scenes strung together by some repetitive nudity all the while supposedly thinking we are watching something that, at least, attempts something a little adult beyond the usually sexually sterile Hollywood Rom-Com but we're really not, it has all the depth and substance of a child's cardboard paddling pool. I, for one, just sat there mostly thinking 'man, Jake Gyllenhaal looks like Eddie Munster, the werewolf child off the TV'
It was also another completely wasted opportunity because a film that could've been a 'Thank You for Smoking' for the Pharmaceutical industry ended up being a film that 13 year olds will watch certain scenes from to masturbate to when their parents are out buying groceries or, god forbid, working.
Also, they seem to have wasted the opportunity to do a good and poignant satire, simply so they could use the registered names of Pfizer and Viagra but by doing this and setting it in 96 to, I guess, give it some sort of historical reality, they were then unable to really go ahead a bite the hand that was, no doubt behind the scenes, feeding the whole thing anyway. Just another annoying trick played on us by the people who brought you restless leg syndrome and anti-depressent medication that can actually increase your chances of wanting to top yourself, i.e. our friends at the pharma companies.
For once the adage, if there is one, that 'tits maketh a movie' does not ring true. I never thought I would sit watching a film willing beyond all hope that Anne Hathaway would put her clothes back on and do something interesting! but congratulations Hollywood you made that very movie! Gyllenhaal is usually a bit better than this and I was really disappointed.
In the end though, obviously, it wasn't my choice of movie and so I was pleasantly pleased, when we got up out of our seats and headed to the diner, to find my wife and her friend were of a similar opinion as to the below averageness of the movie and I would have no problem voicing my opinion about what rubbish I thought it all was. They did, however, want Anne Hathaway's hair and my wife probably wished I looked more like Jake Gyllenhaal and less like a flabby, Lon Chaney style, beardy werewolf, still, can't have everything!
4 out of 10 foam filled cups of what appears to be mocha, cappa, frappa, flappychino but turns out to be just hot air and some dribbly milk.
Points from The Wife 4 out of 10 also as, she too, with a little hindsight had worked out just how this film really lacks substance of any kind.
Morning Glory - 20th November 2010
The poster for this movie, see left, states that breakfast TV just got interesting, well that, at least, gets one thing right, Breakfast TV has never been interesting but as for it getting interesting in this movie? that doesn't happen either.
As I have said before, sometimes you have to go watch a film because your wife wants to go see it and this was one of those but, considering I liked the actors involved and I can sit through these sort of 'little person with a big dream' movies pretty easily and let it wash over me, I wasn't dreading it too much.
Written by the same writer behind The Devil Wears Prada, which was 'ok' and 27 Dresses, which was unlikable bilge, this is the same sort of cliche'd, obvious, undemanding, bland, repetitive, you saw it all in the trailer, throwaway tosh you've seen 100 times by someone who once owned 'The Idiot's Guide To Screenwriting' and, sadly, followed it to the letter.
Rachel McAdams, who is in every bloody scene, even when you don't want her to be, is the single, hard working but chirpy young woman who gets laid off from her producing job at a local New Jersey TV station because of those evil corporate suits and in one of many particularly uninspiring and limp montages, manages, finally, to get a meeting with another nonchalant, corporate bigwig played by a surprisingly serious, and therefor nowhere near as good or watchable as he should have been, Jeff Goldblum. On her way out of an interview, she thinks she didn't get because The Goldblum turned out to be a condescending bastard with, unusually for Jeff, no sly grim letting him off the hook, she bumps into both her future squeeze, the underused, under developed and pointlessly tedious Patrick Wilson and future nightmare, Harrison 'did I have a stroke?' Ford, in the elevator. Why yes, of course she does, how fortuitous.
She goes on to get a job trying to revitalise a fatuous morning show on fictional network IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome?) where the talent hate her, namely Diane Keaton's well played but thinly drawn diva presenter, and the staff don't expect her to last a week. She then goes on to hire Harrison Ford's irascible old "serious news" pro, which he over plays to the point of teeth grinding annoyance, after she fires the first male co-anchor who, out of nowhere, is orange, a huge egotist and an internet pervert.
So far so obvious, of course she's going to tame the old codger, get the ratings up to some magical number before they cancel the show, find the right balance between work and home and learn some ridiculous hogwash about how people are what matter and not the job she's wanted since she was a child and oodles of cash.
Ford's character gripes, grumbles and walks about being a smart arse looking like he constantly needs a poo or a heart attack, Keaton's character bitches or occasionally does embarrassing things like dance with a rapper or wear a sumo suit (get Woody on the phone Diane!!!), McAdams flaps her arms about, talks too fast, changes her hair, cries, takes off her clothes and runs through some pigeons in slow motion, Wilson is the underdeveloped and irrelevant 'bit-of-stuff' and Goldblum talks in such a monotone nasal drawl he may well of actually slept through his entire part waking only momentarily to get paid. The laughable and unbelievable thing is the whole film is stolen, from under the various blocked noses of these hollywood royalty, by a bald weatheman character and the farcical and very funny situations McAdams, as the producer, puts him in. Just as I was thinking 'I am not sure I can handle much more of this', the scenes of him being tortured in ever increasingly hilarious ways for the sake of ratings came on and I actually found myself laughing.
The direction is all Hollywood gloss and that's fine but it's an absolute sin the way it darts around various bits of New York with no effort made to hide the fact that it's both geographically incorrect and they are doing it to show off flashy locations. At least most films have the good decency to try and disguise their tourist book version of the city but in this film, for example, I did find myself asking 'sorry, why is this work meeting with boss Jeff Goldblum taking place on the steps of The Met with an unexplained red head when A) there's no reason for it and B) it's later divulged that he's actually sleeping with the dumb girl who presents useless segments on confused mysticism and uses words she doesn't understand on the show?' or 'why is she, again, discussing ratings with ol' Jeff, surely an office based practice too, comically trying to keep up with his jogging round the reservoir in Central Park?' Absolutely none of it makes any sense at all.
The whole sorry mess is an overly-long, by-the-books shambles with 15 endings you see coming from about 20 minutes in, some homespun, obvious philosophy passed off as wisdom, an entirely irrelevant and completely shortchanged romantic subplot, so many montages featuring wishy washy pop music that are so badly put together, you'd rather saw your own ears off and some thoroughly unrealistic nonsense farce jarring with moments of supposed serious emotional stuff. Also, it has no sophistication about it at all, it tries to, for example, in some of the insulting banter that goes back and forth between Ford and Keaton, attempting, I suppose, to conjure up the rapid fire comical jibes of a 1940s Hollywood comedy but then chooses to end, and believe me I am not spoiling anything at all, with McAdams and Ford walking into a, might as well be, cartoon sunset discussing a prostate check! Oh how hilarious, a prostate check gag! how original! They should have gone the whole hog, had a little circle wipe come down, single them out and have a cartoon pig lean out of the screen and stammer "That's all folks" followed by the Benny Hill music, as Patton Oswald would say "whackety schmackety dooo!"
It just never knows what it wants to be and can't decide when to end, which is funny because I can answer both those things, it wants to be The Devil Wears Prada in a TV Station and it should have ended before it began.
The screenwriter is to blame for all of it because most of the actors try, Goldblum aside, the director tries, throwing filters, camera glare, dutch angles and slow motion at it to try and make it interesting but ultimately with such a trite, obvious plot line, that has absolutely no idea where it's going for the first two thirds of the movie, there's not much you can do but wait for the whole sorry thing to be over.
In certain circumstances (see my Soul Men review) I don't mind a cliche'd Hollywood storyline, in fact most times I expect a certain amount of it but, for this screenwriter at least, all they've done is dusted off a former hit, changed the names and the setting and then presented it again. It's so very annoyingly lazy.
The plus points, and there aren't many, actually come in the form of two secondary characters, one the kindly jewish, second-in-command producer who is genuinely likable and two, the aforementioned, put upon weatherman and also, as always, the city of New York. Even if it is the postcard image of this diverse and varied city, as one astute and, no doubt, bored patron muttered behind me during one of the helicopter shots of Manhattan at dusk, 'wow New York is a beautiful looking city'.
That it is, it's just unfortunate it seems to have lately become the back drop to an endless run of uninspiring rom-coms, so terribly awful, that it gives us all a bad name.
Oh well.
3 out of 10 rotten fruit platters
Points from The Wife 4 out of 10
The Switch - 21st August 2010
Ok, if you've seen the trailer to this then you know the story and you know the outcome.
You know that single late 30s woman wants baby. Her improbable best friend is a neurotic, hypercondriac, commitment-phobe who gets humourously drunk one night, implausibly swaps sperm with the original donor and 7 years later when the kid's all cute and inquisitive, it's up to the man to grow up, learn, change, tell the woman his mistake and win her back after the inevitable argument, resentment and realisation that really she loved him all along.
To say nothing of the old chestnut that, because of alcohol, he conveniently 'forgets' what he did for 7 years!
Going into these types of formulaic rom-coms time and time again you get to recognise the patterns very quickly and so the film becomes less about the destination and more about the ride. You also find your tolerance for complete and utter nonsense that borders on inane crap is made higher if either the performances, or the actors trying to give those performances, are watchable.
In the case of The Switch a couple of them are but it's not the couple in question, it's Jason Batemen and, the always wonderful, Jeff Goldblum. Without them this film would've been unrivaled agony to sit through. The kid in question is very good as well considering what a precocious little turd we could've been lumbered with and all in all, and I hate to say this as I would love the women to be good too, but if you're watching the three boys then you're ok. The film is funny enough, quirky enough and has enough little interesting ideas and scenes that you just about forgive it all its failings.
Let me start this next section of the review by saying I have no problem, usually, with Jennifer Aniston. Yes she has made some horrendous choices of late, The Bounty Hunter and Love Happens, but we should never forget she's also in Office Space, The Good Girl and The Break Up. She's a very competent comedienne and when given the right script she can shine. The totally mad and bonkers thing about The Switch is actually how little she is given to do. The film focusses, quite surprisingly, on Jason Bateman's quite complex character Wally and then later on his relationship with his son.
Jennifer Aniston's character, sadly, doesn't have a character.
Yet again in a major Hollywood film they haven't bothered writing a part for the actors beyond pieces on a board being moved around to fulfill whatever idiotic plot device they need to speed this bland train towards it's predictable and thoroughly beige finale. For example:
1. We are not sure why she wants a baby, except the inevitable tick tocking of her biological clock, which we have to assume because we are never even told her age!
2. We are never told really how or why her and Wally are best friends (especially as soon as she gets pregnant she leaves Wally and disappears for 6 years with apparently very little communication - what? in these days of e-mail, Facebook and cheap long distance calls!),
3. Except for a throw away scene and the odd line, there is absolutely no explanation of her career status. If you were in TV wouldn't you have the person, I don't know, exhibit some passion for the career? or at least mention it in passing
4. It makes little to no sense that she would have a whacked out, crazy, new agey friend like the annoying, grating and hideous Juliette Lewis character (seemingly thrown in there to give the film that thin veneer of boiled anus the studio execs so clearly thought it lacked)
5. Despite not wanting Wally's sperm at the beginning of the film because he is so neurotic and crazy, she happily raises a kid who is absolutely nuts without batting an eyelid and, although you can forgive her slightly for never expecting foul play on Wally's part (because it's so ludicrously far-fetched), when she ends up dating who she thinks was the donor (now conveniently divorced) she never stops and thinks, wait a minute this man is absolutely nothing like my child at all.
In fact she has so little character that the kid only seems to display Wally's personality traits and none of hers.
This lack of character or fitting characters to suit a scene extends to her beyond-irritating female friend played by the why-doesn't-she-just-give-it-up-now wrinkly mess of Juliette Lewis who, as I said earlier, is there literally to be annoying (because irritaing = funny, right?) and to the donor who goes from a handsome, nervous, married professor of Feminine Studies to a grinning chump and simple man-child who is into rock climbing and hanging out at manly cabins by the lake because Wally's the sensitive one, remember...
None of it really makes any sense and the only reason to watch this is for the Jeff and Jason show which yields the films funniest moments in the film and also to be pleasantly surprised that a character as seemingly messed up and occasionally dark as Wally's character exists in a throw-away rom-com of this type.
6 out of 10 french toasts
Points from The Misses 7 out of 10 french toasts
Eat Pray Love - 15th August 2010
Now, let me explain. When you're married, or some girl's boyfriend, you have to occasionally make a concession and go to a movie that you would normally have rather wrenched your own tongue out with some rusty pliers than patronise with so much as a slightly damp sneeze. Hopefully, if it's a good relationship, they in turn will go see some gun-toting, pony-tail sporting, loud-mouth movie and if it's a great relationship some really disturbingly graphic porn.
I am one of the very lucky ones as my wife loves zombie films and introduced me to the true joys of Stallone. Most of the time when we see a movie we generally agree on the major parts of it and just occasionally she likes tat that I wouldn't waft my anal emissions at, usually featuring Patrick Dempsey or something.
Luckily with Cough Fart Snooze, sorry Eat Pray Love, we were more or less on the same page.
Ok, so, where to begin? First of all this movie is 17 hours long. It would be quicker to personally travel to Italy, India and Bali on the back of a wheezing dromedary than watch Julia Roberts do it in the cinema. I had seen the trailer for the film a handful of times and had thought "ok, so I am going to get dragged to this and that's fine, I like Roberts and there's bound to be some interesting shots of exotic countries I can enjoy" but unfortunately that wasn't really the case because instead of making the most of each of these fascinating locations she goes to and at least giving us the odd montage of Julia gayly skipping amongst the ruins of Rome, enjoying the incense of India and basking on or bathing off the beaches in Bali, what we in fact get is a lot of self important whiny folk blathering on and on about their home-spun, knocked-off, mosaic philosophies while Roberts, with a seemingly endless supply of cash stuffs her face or blubs her eyes out, self-importantly.
Which segues beautifully into my second point and that is why on earth, mars and the moon should I give two shakes of a bison's doo-dah about this woman's life?
Which segues beautifully into my second point and that is why on earth, mars and the moon should I give two shakes of a bison's doo-dah about this woman's life?
The film begins and she's married, apparently unhappily but it's never fully established why, something to do with him wanting to do some more education and her wanting to swan about in designer clothes drinking a lot of fancy foaming beverages while she selfishly bleeds her friends dry of all of their love and support. She then quickly hops into bed with the first vacuous, odious, eastern-religion spouting, scruffy wanna-be, hemp chewing teenager she can find (James Franco disappointingly back in glassy eyed annoying as all hell mode) before quickly realising he's not right either, again it's not established or explained why, and deciding out-of-the-blue to travel to three different places in the world but not because she has any genuine or apparent passion to do so but just because some toothless, ancient, barmy Bali dweller gave her some hokey palm reading months back and that's as good a reason as any.
Glossing over for the moment how the hell an unemployed writer can afford such a ridiculous trip after an expensive divorce and the fact that I am meant to, but couldn't possibly, care for this directionless bimbo who whines about things most people would sell their aunties and parakeets to have long enough to become that disenchanted with, the real crime here is that this movie got made at all.
From all that I have heard the source material is even more devoid of human tact and understanding than the film is and I know in times of crisis people want escape but who thought anyone, when in the depths of the current recession, would want to watch this self-involved millionaire writhe around in linguine, hindu and Javier Bardem for 100 hours!
Maybe I am weird, old before my time, particularly bright or just plain perceptive but the so-called lesson that she apparently learns on the beaches of Bali with Mr.Perfect Bardem and his predictable past with trust issues, I knew and understood about 10 years ago and it didn't take an all expenses trip around the world, a lot of naval gazing and some waffly eastern mysticism to achieve either.
The sad thing is I have met these whining sorts for whom the discontinuation of their favourite colour of lip gloss is a suicide-worthy event and so this movie will probably appeal to quite a few, also the trailer makes it look possibly watchable and interesting so some will be fooled like us.
The one thing I would say is that if you started to watch the film from half way through (about the time that Richard Jenkins shows up - never a disappointment) and she's in India trying to get her ducks in a row then the film would be almost enjoyable, some of the scenes in Bali make you wish you had a bottomless pot of gold so you too could flounce about the street markets full of mad fruit, the bamboo huts and billowing white sheets and gaze out at the fishing boat bombing sea. Javier Bardem also acts the hell out of a cliche but occasionally genuinely emotional role.
Finally, because of all of that, by the end of this whole hideous debacle I did leave the cinema feeling good, smug and in dire need of something containing soy milk and guava so I guess, it sort of did its job.
2.5 out of 10 Turkey clubs
Points from the Misses - 4 out of 10 Turkey clubs