| Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only an error to be exposed. -- H.L. Menken | ||||
|
American Pie
 Last Week: American Pie:  I've spent a couple of years listening to ravings about how this movie was something like the Animal House of the 90s. I didnt bother going to see it the first time around, I havent made any effort to rent it, and until last night my resistance to its dubious allure was sufficiently strong. However, I figured that sooner or later Id have to take on this movie, if for no other reason than the fact that it has achieved a remarkable staying power: Wherever film goers gather to discuss comedy, this movie inevitably gets brought up. Apparently a sequel is even in the works, and the website promoting it has already been posted. Ive learned that the cast from the original will be reunited, which seems like a bit of a stretch. Some of the characters, who were supposedly high school age, looked like they were already pushing 30, as Im rather sure they were. Hollywood is being very secretive about the plot of the film which will be released in August. Still, a film which was made for somewhat less than $10 million and grossed over $100 million is too much for the Hollywood folks to resist, so I am bracing for the sequels impact. Here are some of the conclusions I came to after watching American Pie. *Any movie which features a scene with 3 or more male characters sitting in an eating establishment discussing sex is going to suck. *Lets take that one a step further: Any move which features 3 male characters sitting in an eating establishment discussing anything is going to suck. Probably because, being male, the conversation is going to get around to sex in due order. Sure, there may be interludes where cars and sports are brought up, but you can bet sex is going to come up. *If high school students were really moronic enough to subject themselves to the humiliations experienced by the characters in this film, school shootings would no longer be major headline news in America. Psychologically shattered teens would be shooting up their classmates 4 or 5 times a day, somewhere across this great land. *Hollywood's objectification of women has now descended to a level where we have surpassed merely exploiting them in the pages of magazines or latex toys: We can now intellectually compare them to pastries. *It is simply impossible to make a comedy aimed primarily at teenage audiences which features a single adult character who isnt a blithering moron. Its okay for an adult character to be an essentially well meaning, even kindly moron, but moron they must be. *It is still actually possible, in this magnificent nation of ours, to separate teens from their wallets by doing a one joke movie. *It is possible for see-through, plastic beer cups to magically transform themselves into dark blue beer cups, and back again.. I think this can only happen if, (1) The beer cup is originally handled by a male character who (2) hands it to a female character where it magically morphs, then (3) the female hands it back and it becomes a clear beer cup again. I think this entire magical transformation is also only possible if the beer cup in question contains a quantity of semen. I leave it to the Kexkateers to perform the field research on this one, but the mysterious phenomenon above occurs rather early in this film. Watch the scene closely; you cant miss it...well, maybe you cant. My movie watching partner, who has seen this film several times, never noticed the magical incident until I pointed it out to her. *The Weitz brothers, as directors, are even lamer than the Farley brothers. Perhaps the object lesson here is that any teen comedy directed by a brother team is going to suck...Weitz, Farley, Wayans, its all poison. American Pie is essentially a comedy about a group of high school boys who set a deadline for themselves to get laid by prom night. This is the films first, essential absurdity. I have vague memories of being a teenage boy, and I still have nearly daily encounters with the creatures. Their typical deadline for getting laid in life is 8 OClock tonight. Most of them are typically bound for daily disappointment, which is good practice for life. Ah...those formative years. Still, it is that overabundance of frustrated male testosterone that is responsible for nearly every typical male pursuit from small scale forays into the wilderness for the purpose of decimating at least small quantities of the fauna, to World War II. It all leaves me amazed on a daily basis that we have successfully navigated the minefield of possessing nuclear weapons for 60 years. The ultimate moral of this film? Getting laid is difficult, but when it happens, its pretty good. Sometimes not getting laid can be pretty good too...it all depends. So, Hollywood steals 90 minutes of our lives to tell us that sex is important, but other things are important too. All so that the teenage males who view this film can mostly miss the latter portion of the message, and most likely try to score on their dates after they see the film. Last Week: Human Nature:  I almost feel as if its necessary to reveal some rather obscure detail from this movie just to prove that I actually saw it. Based upon the size of the "crowd" I saw it with, its safe to say that this film is not going to be a significant box-office draw. That probably isn't too surprising either. It made the festival circuit last fall and received favorable enough critical acclaim to get a distribution contract. But the studio execs more or less decided to cut their losses even before anyone decided to gamble and give the film enough publicity to have a fair shot at finding an audience. Burying its release in mid-April isn't going to help matters either. I don't necessarily want to create the impression that this is a buried gem just waiting for an appreciative audience to discover it. Quite frankly, Human Nature flounders under the weight of two deadly sins: First of all, it attempts to convey ingenuity by exposing the painfully obvious. At the same time, it tries to achieve notoriety by being wildly controversial. It fails miserably on both scores, and I'll explain each point in turn. The film follows the story of three unusual characters. The first is an annoyingly anal psychologist, Nathan (Tim Robbins). He labors under the impression that the plight of humanity can be improved if he can teach lab rats proper table manners, including appropriate use of silverware. The second character is Lila (Patricia Arquette), a woman afflicted with a rare medical condition. Her body grows hair uncontrollably. This makes it impossible for her to ever find a man, so she becomes sort of a hermit living in the forest and making a living by being a nature writer. Its within this plotline that the film misfires tragically for the first of many times. I read in Cecil Adams' column just this week, and I almost shudder to reveal this to the Kexkateers, that it can be established with reasonable certainty that about 1 in 8 people have had, or occasinally have sex with animals. I'm not mentioning this to validate or endorse the practice in any fashion. I note it merely to make a very important observation about the film. Given the aforementioned apparent fact, I really don't believe that a woman with the body and general aesthetic gifts of Lila would really have much problem attracting adequate male attention, body hair problem not withstanding. Hell, I know guys that would bag Patrica Arquette if she was matted like a sheep dog, and the attending male in question would turn 12 shades of purple for a month after the encounter. Besides the film makes the errant assumption that sex is the single, overriding and driving motivation in women's lives. It may well be up there at the top, but it isn't consuming to the degree implied in this film. The third important character is Puff (Rhys Ifans), whose father takes him into the wilderness as a baby and teaches him to live like an ape after rejecting civilization. The film runs into trouble for the second time when it uses the Puff character to imply that modern society has advanced beyond the point where its capable of providing for basic human needs. That may be true in a sense, but realistically we passed the point of no return on that journey a couple of millenia ago. Note to Director Michael Gondry; sorry man, but you are a couple of thousand years late, and many dollars short, if nobody sees this film. That's a fair probability. As you may have guessed, Nathan finds Puff, and brings him back to his lab to "civilize" him. Nathan has a problem meeting women, and is a 35 year old virgin until he is introduced to Lila by a mutual friend. But once he begins a relationship with Lila, his lab assistant (Miranda Otto) becomes attracted to him, and he is torn between his desires for the two women. The film makes one final overly simplistic false turn in implying that men generally only want what they don't have. Wow, there is a revelation. I believe Shakespeare pointed that out a few hundred years ago when he penned "..what's won is done. Joy's soul lies in the doing. What she beloved knows not, that knows not this: Men value the thing ungained more than it is." Of course, the bard never dreamed that things were exactly that simple, and his plays explored just how complicated human motivations could become. Human Nature tries to wrap it all up in sound bite packages that seem to be the modus for communicating with the masses these days. I will give this movie credit for one thing: It is at least original. I can't ever fault any filmmaker for trying something new or different since so few have the stones to do it these days. The biggest fault in this movie lies in failing to have the first clue as to the location of the target the filmmakers were firing at in the first place. By the way, Nathan's lab assistant has a kiss-lip-shaped phone, and Nathan was scolded for using the wrong fork for his salad as a child. That should resolve any question as to whether or not I really am one of the 200 or so people who actually have seen, or will see this movie. Last Week: What A Girl Wants: I sat through a hundred minutes of this cinematic equivalent to the Chinese Water Torture, and I still don't know crap about what a girl wants. That title is certainly promising enough, and after 40 some years as a human being on this planet, its kind of exciting to think you might have the opportunity to learn something. But I still don't really know. I think I do know what an amateur movie reviewer wants. Maybe its more what I don't want: I don't want to ever have sit sit through a piece of crap like this again. That is too much to hope for I realize. In fact, I'll probably end up shooting some irretrievable portion of my life on a similar venture next week. This movie did provide me with one valuable insight into the realities of the world. For that, I am somewhat grateful. After seeing this movie, I have some greater measure of insight as to why most of the rest of the world hates we Americans so much. Its not just that we create a lot of movies like this. No, its the annoying attitude we convey within movies like this. I might have missed something here. I'm sure I did, because Joy actually seemed to like this movie, while I was pondering how much more pleasant a borax and peroxide enema might be. But the reason movies like this make we Americans so detestable to the rest of the world is the message we convey. I watched this film with sort of a queasy horror as it delivered the dubious message forever to the populace of our planet that Great Britan would be a much more pleasant place to live if only everyone there acted a lot more like teenage American girls. Sorry, but I just don't think that is the answer to nation's problems. At heart, this is sort of a fairly tale princess movie. Amanda Byne plays a typical American teenage girl, who is the offspring of a single mom. It seems that dear old mom once met some sort of English nobleman in Morocco or someplace. He was a Duke, or an Earl or something. Maybe he was the Duke of Earl. Anyway, his family didn't approve of her, and she got kicked back across the Atlantic pregnant with young Amanda. Amanda grows up depressed because she is never going to get to do a father/daughter dance at her future wedding. You see, Mom is a wedding singer, and Amanda's character helps out at a waitress at the weddings. That affords her numerous opportunites to suffer over her yet to be shattered dream wedding. I don't like to run down character motivation, but lets face it folks. As teenage angst goes, you can see something heavier in reruns of Gidget. Eventually Amanda's heartbreak leads her to run off to England in search of her father. With a wedding singer mom who probably doesn't make a hell of a lot of money, I wasn't quite sure exactly how she financed the whole adventure. I guess if anyone asks rational questions of that nature, the plot of films like this go down the crapper pretty quick. So since the whole thing is a class of fairy tale, I suppose we are just to imagine that a cute 17 year-old girl can walk up to the ticket counter at J.F.K. and ask for a ticket without having to pay. Amanda's arrival in England creates severe problems for pops. He is giving up his seat in the House of Lords in order to actually have to stand for election in the House of Commons. He is apparently doing it because he is a swell guy who wants to help out the people. I'm not sure why he couldn't do that with the position he already held, but then I don't really know crap about British politics. That puts me in common with most of the people in Britian, from what I hear. The wild antics of Amanda in England create problems for her father, and he begins to drop in the polls. Apparently unless you have a major stick up your ass, its pretty difficult to get elected to anything in Britan. The way they go about electing people over there must be a lot different than the way we do it here. For one thing, you actually have to get the most votes. From what I could gather, its apparently not enough over there to just have your brother rig the election for you by kicking 173,000 people off the voter rolls permanently, most of whom are black and certain to vote for the other guy. Of course, nothing like that would ever happen here either, because nobody with the tiniest amount of integrity would actually do something like that. For that matter, nobody with the tiniest amount of integrity would consider employing a ballot so confusing that it would cause 3000 elderly Jewish citizens in West Palm Beach to accidentally vote for Pat Buchannan. That is the nice thing about living in America. We know that when we elect people to office, nothing like that would ever happen, so we can believe our elected leaders unconditionally when they tell us that we are going to war because we are threatened by somebody else's weapons of mass destruction (which a UN team couldn't find) rather than gaining control over the second largest oil reserves in the world. And just because our two top national leaders have significant oil industry interests, well, that is just coincidence, because we know it. Oh yeah, the movie. Well, we get to see Amanda help pull the stick out of her dad's ass. He and dear old mom get back together, Amanda gets 871 closeups, and changes costumes 937 times. The best part of it all was that daylight savings time began this weekend, so when this was all over, it was still light out and I didn't have to run out of the theater screaming into the night. Last Week: The Alamo: If you are a Coloradoan, there isn't anything a whole lot more enjoyable than spending an afternoon watching a bunch of Texans getting their asses whipped. There are basically two kinds of Texans: Those who have already moved out of the state, but continue to brag endlessly about how great Texas is, and those who still technically live there, but spend almost all of their time in Colorado talking about how great Texas is. I suppose Texas does actually look pretty good if you don't actually spend any time there. Otherwise, it isn't much but sagebrush, scrawny cows and oil rigs. Downtown Dallas looks like apocalypse came two decades ago, and everyone just forget to tell the people who still live in the city. Houston has never heard of zoning laws. It's probably one of the weirdest cities in the country. If you happen to visit San Antonio, which is on the whole almost a tolerable city, you will probably visit the Alamo. If you do, you will come away with no real historical perspective of what actually happened there. The problem is, that no real effort was ever made to preserve the historic flavor of the old mission. Its not like visiting The Little Big Horn, which was a century ago, and still is, way out in the middle of no where. So you can kind of get a feel for what things were like when Custer and his cavalry came riding through. Similarly, the Gettysburg battlefield, and to a large degree the town itself, has been preserved to the greatest degree possible close to the way it was during the Civil War. Sure the town has grown and modified itself, and visitors to the battlefield are bilked by almost every shop in town. But at least nobody has surrendered to the temptations to stick a Super WalMart on Seminary Ridge. Not so with the Alamo. Its right smack in the middle of downtown San Antonio. Its just really hard to imagine Santa Anna and his men sitting around the lunch counter at the Woolworth's that used to be across the street, sipping coffee, and taking up a collection for a good tip. Then they charged out and sacked Davy Crockett and company after carefully avoiding the evening rush hour traffic. The problem with this movie is that we just didn't really get to see much of the part where the Texans take a whipping. That is true to history. The Mexicans wiped out the defenders of the Alamo in about an half hour. It took even less time in this movie, and we are talking about a film with a running time of 150 minutes. The last half hour contains all of the footage of the battle, as well as Sam Houston's revenge against the Mexican forces. So that leaves us with 2 full hours to fill. And what, exactly did we fill it with? Frankly, the whole thing was a pretty laborius blabfest. It raised my eyebrows somewhat when I first learned that Billy Bob Thornton was being cast to play Davy Crockett. I kind of know why they did it that way now. This film took rather great pains to establish the fact that most of the great heros of the Alamo were really extremely flawed human beings. Crockett was portrayed as a guy who was really all hat, and no cowboy as we might say today. Most of the exploits for which he became a legend in his own time were either purely fictional, or wildly dressed up retellings of incidents that were not terribly worthy of elevating him to hero status. If fact, some of them were apparently downright criminal. Sam Houston (Dennis Quaid) was an exhibitionistic drunk who more or less allowed the defenders of the Alamo to get slaughtered rather than making any real attempt to gather forces that might have helped save the situation. Then we have Jim Bowie (Jason Patric), who was also a drunk, as well as a meglomaniac. His own participation in the defense of the fort was confined to occupying a bed as he was overcome by malaria. He most likely died without firing a shot. Finally we have the Alamo's military commander, William Travis (Patrick Wilson) who was more concerned about the security of his command than he was about the safety or effective defense of the fort. If even half of the negative portrayal of the principle characters can be reasonably construed as factual, its a wonder that it took Santa Anna and his troops a whole 30 minutes to wipe out the whole band of egomaniacs. Apparently the only reason that they had as much difficulty as they did was because Santa Anna (Emilio Echevarria) himself was something of a bird of a feather. But eventually after the wholesale slaughter of the Texans defending the Alamo, Houston and his soldiers got there revenge, and Texas became an independent Republic. Nine years later, they realized that the whole country was too full of incompetent scoundrels who spent all their time vacationing in the future state of Colorado to be a functioning country, and they joined the United States. For most of two more centuries, Texas continued to produced a long succession of incompetent scoundrels, and the result was the Bush family. And know you know, the rest of the story... I do want to give this film one point of credit before I close: The battle scenes were filmed without the kind of graphic guts anb gore that I have seen in the last few war movies I've watched. Even better, the director did not feel the necessity to try to convey confusion by tossing the camera in a cement mixer. You could actually see what was going on. Last Week: Kingdom of Heaven: I really don't mind almost automatically getting a senior discount that I'm not entitled to at the nearby theater. The discount is pretty nice, considering the full price of admission these days. Hey, its almost half price if you get right down to it, and that is about what most of the movies we see are worth anyway, optomistically. What I don't need is the kind of dialog I had to endure as I was purchasing the tickets for Kingdom of Heaven. The exchange went something like this: Me: Two for Kingdom of Heaven, please. Ticket guy: senior tickets? Me: Okay, if you say so. Ticket guy: um, are you aware that this is a two and a half hour movie? Me: What's the problem, junior? Don't think I'll still be alive by the end of it? Actually, he might have had a point. Kingdom of Heaven is such an unabashed marathon in ennui that even younger patrons were probably clinging by a thread by the time they left the cinema. Not that there were all that many in attendance. This movie carries an "R" rating, although for the life of me I can't really figure out why. There is no nudity, which was a serious disappointment since I was holding some at least base hopes of seeing Eva Green get naked. Nonetheless, about all this film got zapped for was rather high levels of violence, and you can see equally appalling depictions in movies with cleaner ratings. Our story begins with our hero Balian (Orlando Bloom) hammering out horseshoes for outbound crusaders somewhere in France. Throughout the early scenes, there was some sort of weird shit constantly blowing through the air. I guess it was supposed to be snow, but it never melted. It looked more like ashes, although no fires were burning anywhere. Along comes Godfrey (Liam Neeson, who apparently has a long term contract with 20th Century Fox to do mentor roles), some sort of Baron in Jerusalem, which is under Christian control. He just also happens to be the father that Balian has never met. Godfrey offers Balian the opportunity to go to the holy land with him and claim his birthright, but Balian is something of a selfrighteous pig and quickly says no. It looked at that point like our movie was going to last closer to 10 minutes than 150. But the local priest comes to Balian and offers a convincing argument: Balian's wife has just committed suicide, and if he goes to the holy land, he just might be able to pursuade God to release her from hell. Balian responds to news of the fate of his wife rather badly, by running the priest through with a sword and tossing him in the fire. He then rides off in search of dear old dad. Balian catches up with Godfrey and his men, but the authorities are close behind. A confusing battle scene ensues that leaves us dangerously short of characters, and Godfrey badly injured. Nonetheless, he and Balian manage to make it to the Italian coast. Just before Godfrey exits the movie by the good fortune of dying, he knights Balian, who heads on to Jerusalem. Upon arriving there, he finds the situation in tense disarray. Jerusalem is being ruled by the kindly leper King Baldwin (Edward Norton) who is served by the brave knight Tiberias (Jeremy Irons) and his men. But standing in opposition is the evil lord of the Knigts of Templar, Guy de Lusignan (Marton Csokas), who is itching to go to war with the Muslim hoard, led by Saladin (Ghassan Massoud). Guy's wife, Sibylla (Eva Green) immediately gets the hots for Balian, and we get the impression that she spreads it around pretty liberally, if you catch my drift. That further leads to the tensions between Balian and Guy, since Balian has already sworn allegiance to King Baldwin. Of course, this is all revisionist history of the highest order. The crusaders were pretty much all of the thread of Guy and his cohorts, and the invading Christians looked upon the Muslims as worthless heretics. But director Ridley Scott is trying to add a mood of contemporary political correctness into the proceedings. Perhaps he should just make a speech. And while he is at it, maybe he should go back to film school and try to learn how to film a coherent battle scene. His filmed battles are always so dark and confusing that the actors might as well be playing "hot potato" with the rolling camera. But the bottom line question here is, does anyone in 2005 really want to sit through at 2 and 1/2 hour boring movie about the crusades? No. Last Week: Cars::  : I believe, this is the best animated movie yet made. Its an art that just gets better and better everytime out. But I went into this film fully ready to hate it for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it has already inspired so much critical ass-kissing that half the professional reviewers in the country must have some seriously chapped lips. Then there is the fact that I don't share the typical American male love for automobiles. In fact, I pretty much despise them, viewing them as more or less of a necessary evil. As a general rule, if I go within 50 feet of an automobile more than twice, the alternator is going to fail within 3 days. Its like some kind of grand, unwritten rule of the universe. I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think I've ever owned an automobile in which I didn't have to replace the alternator half a dozen times. And it doesn't just apply to my own cars. I had to borrow my brother's car once when mine was broken. A few days later, the alternator died. There was even an ocassion when I got a ride to the airport with a professional collegue and the alternator in his car failed the next day. So, there is something about my personal chemistry, or aura, or whatever that is death to alternators. We can continue with the fact that I don't care all that much for Owen Wilson, who provides the voice for the main character. Nor am I a big fan of Larry the Cable Guy, who's style of humor largely escapes me. In fact, everytime I see Larry the Cable Guy on TV, I get the feeling that its sort of a test of my resolve not to make sport of the less fortunate. Then there is the general NASCAR theme of this film, and I'm not a huge fan. Over the past couple of years, my interest in the sport has grown a little, from absolutely 0 to slightly above 0. I still can't entirely appreciate the evident attraction associated with watching a bunch of rednecks drive in circles for three hours. I'm beginning to appreciate the fact that there is more to it than that. But let's face it...there isn't a LOT more to it than that. While we are discussing cars in general, there is also the annoying fact that it is getting incredibly expensive just to drive from point A to point B these days, even ignoring the costs of maintaining one of these motorized money pits. Quite aside from the problems I have with alternators, its worthy to note that exactly one time in my life I've ever had a problem with a car that cost less than a hundred bucks...I think that time it cost $60 for someone to tell me that the radiator cap wasn't sealing tight. I think they realized that if I were too much of an idiot to figure that out for myself, getting me to fork over $60 for that information wouldn't be a problem. They were right Still, I strongly recommend this movie, and I want to provide a valuable piece of information. You need to stay and watch the closing credits. In fact, you need to hang around for a few minutes after the closing credits too, or you will miss some really good stuff. I don't have all that much more to say about the movie, so here is something worthy of attention; is Ann Coulter a bitch or what? Regular readers of this page already know that my answer to that one has been "yes" for a long time. Now the rest of America is finally starting to figure out that I was right. For anyone who may have missed it, Ms. Bitch made these remarks on national televison this week in regard to 9-11 widows: "These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process. These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much." What kind of cold, heartless, insensitive moron could possible make a statement like that? I guess the same one that in her current book, Godless, the Church of Liberalism describles liberalism as "the opposition party to God." Liberalism isn't a party, and I know a lot of liberals who are very devoted to their various religious beliefs. A lot of them even attend church regularly, which is a step ahead of Coulter. While she has claimed to be a member of the Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, it is evidently less than accurate. Creegan Cooke, who is the media director for the church can not confirm either her membership, or that she has ever attended services there. Bitch and liar...I don't think either quality is very Christ like. I suppose I could also discuss some Rush Limbaugh ranting I heard this week concering global warning. Maybe if he would get off the drugs and take a science course, it might be eye opening... Previously: Good Luck Chuck:  Bad luck Kex. At the point where you get around to noting that this movie featured more bare female breasts than a decade's worth of National Geographics, you quickly run out of any other means to praise it. In point of fact, you could see that just by going into a sleezy bookstore on Colfax Ave and popping in a few quarters. Why did I pay two feature admissions? I'm not sure who's idea it was to cast Dane Cook and Jessica Alba as leads in the same movie. Either one of them could have sunk this lame script all by themselves. Add to that Dan Folger as Cook's best friend, and you have an "all-star cast" that could sink a dinner theater establishment after one performance of one production. Dane Cook plays a dentist named Chuck in this movie. In hindsight, I'd rather have spent a couple hours in a dentist's chair than to have sat through this piece of crap. You have to know you are in for a bad time at the movies when a film starts out a half inch above kiddy porn and then gets worse. Well, soft core adult porn is a step up I guess, but I don't think the old couple 3 rows down was ready for any of it. This movie starts out with a group of kids playing 7 minutes in heaven, or whatever that game is called. Young Chuck is hoping for the bottle to stop on a particular young girl, but instead, it ends up on the girl next to her. She is so hard core goth that she makes Wednesday Adams look like one of the Von Trapp Children. Young Chuck is terrified of her, and the experience gets worse when she comes on to him strong in the closet. When little Chuck doesn't respond, she puts a curse on him that suggests that any woman he sleeps with with find true love with the next man she dates. When Chuck grows up, the curse apparently comes true. He can't make a committment, and all of his girlfriends end up marrying the next man they date after being with him. Chuck's best friend Stu (Folger) grows up to be a plastic surgeon who specializes in breast augmentation.He is pretty much of a loser with women, and his general attitude toward his profession leads to the impression that a major sexual harrassment suit is somewhere in his near future. The guy is not only completely tackless, but he couldn't score in a cheap French brothel with Bill Gates' paycheck. Chuck gets tired of never finding love for himself, but his friend Stu persuades him to take advantage of the situation. Word get's around that every woman chuck goes to bed with ends up getting married quickly thereafter, so women begin filling the lobby of his dental office. Before long, Chuck is getting all the meaningless sex he can handle. The audience is subsequently subjected to a parade of boobs that could fill a modest college football stadium. Then Chuck meets Cam (Alba), a penguin expert at the local aquarium. Chuck falls hard for her, but the relationship is immediately strained because as badly as Chuck wants to get physical, he is afraid that it will lead to her finding another man. Immediately Chuck gets clingy and desperate to not destroy the relationship, but naturally, manages to do exactly that. Therefore, the movie has to build up to the natural reconciliation, which is stock in trade for romantic comedies. The only original thing this film has to offer is a few dozen breast shots from comparatively unknown actresses. The movie is bland, not very original, and, one hopes, about as bad as anything we will have to endure this year. It seemed to amuse the half tanked, college aged boys sitting behind us, but that isn't exactly something to recommend it. Rated "R" and clearly flirting with "NC-17" the only luck you can associate with this film will be not seeing it. The guess here is that a prolonged period will be allowed to elapse before it hits rental, and by that time, the stench will have passed. Lion's Gate will probably hope nobody rents it. | |||
.