This film proves that ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY's opinion on things should be taken with a grain of salt. This film from 2002 was on its top ten list. It's got amateur hour written all over it.
Dag (Ron Eldard, HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG) is dating Halley (Kyra Sedgwick, WHAT'S COOKING?) and their best friend is Peter (Patrick Breen, GALAXY QUEST), whose ballet dancer girlfriend is named Rebecca (Marley Shelton, PLEASANTVILLE). From the first shot, we know that Dag and Rebecca have hooked up. Then injected into the plot is an insane bartender Paula (Marisa Tomei, MY COUSIN VINNY), who is obsessed with Peter's peanut butter commercial. In the peanut butter commercial, Peter dresses up like an eagle and it's so bad it makes local TV ads look really good. Later we meet Andre (Taye Diggs, BROWN SUGAR) who is sleeping with Rebecca and is married to Colleen (Sarita Choudhury, KAMA SUTRA).
This film is the worst offender of mixing comedy styles. It's really hard to blend broad farce with character driven drama. This film fails miserably at its attempt. The plane crash scene is really, really bad. Maybe in an AIRPLANE! movie, but it does not work here. The low-budget really, really shows. The filmmakers were so lazy that in one scene a sports car is supposed to come to a screeching halt, but it's filmed in a way that you know the car was never moving and that sound effects were added in editing to make the off-screen car sound like it was coming to a screeching halt. If it wasn't bad enough that the film couldn't make up its mind on the comedy style, it throws in some random animation for affect.
The direction is really, really amateurish. Fisher Stevens is mainly an actor and he should keep it that way. The film is filled with those "hey, wouldn't that be funny" moments that seem funny in your head, but really aren’t. The moments are played like they're the most original ideas in the world when they're really tired clichés. It's like an Eric Schaeffer (IF LUCY FELL) film where all the jokes seem like short gags from other films strung together on a weak clothesline of a plot. But at least, the individual gags in Schaeffer's films are funny. All the actors seem lost at times in doing "funny" gestures that have nothing to do with their characters. Rebecca is movie dumb, which isn't funny. Paula acts weird, which isn't funny. This is just one awful film.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
