Una historia de amor

"A Case of You" is worth singling out if some great flicks like "Ruby Sparks" made you dig for more. Though, this movie is sort of reliving the dumb formula from the comparison. Okay, an honest opinion is that viewers will be fractured by the plot's predictability, but I'm buying. That doesn't prevent me from saying that the film is one of the sweet romantic comedies bolstered with energy from its young cast ensemble of bright comedians. I dunno, but call me crazy.

Sam (Justin Long) is a well-known author that suffers a block to his next book. An inspiration is what he totally needs, suffice to say. Until she meets the cute blondie coffee gal named Birdie (Evan Rachel Wood), he develops a quirky obsession. As soon as Sam learns that she was fired for frequent tardiness at work, he decided to stalk her Facebook account and decisively scan her likes, interests, and routines. Sam is the ideal manly stalker. And one by one he tries to learn what she likes to do: Play the guitar, read Darwinian, and rock climbing. This is in no doubt a rudimentary principle of we follow in order to woo our special someone, and I admire the film for having the guts to deliver it regardless of being stereotyped.

The chemistry between Long and Wood feels cheesy but endearing. Though, their kismet might be unfairly familiar but at least it's sugar-coated with their funny moment and both make it work. We also get the most of Keir O'Donnell as Sam's buddy roommate Eliot especially from his late- bloomer taboo jokes therein. And the same goes to Peter Dinklage as a gay barista and Brendan Fraser as Birdie's ex Tony. Too bad Dinklage and Fraser is alarmingly hilarious they deserve more time frame than Busy Philips and Vince Vaughn (although he's too substantial) who are both fruitless here. Also adding Sam Rockwell to the mix as the guitar lesson instructor, it gets ticklish funny.

The credits for the screenplay goes to Justin, his brother Christian, and O'Donnell themselves. Kudos to them. They keep me howling in some of their one-liners and made me attracted to their persona. However, like I said their notion for the narrative may disappoint for its jaded impression. This explains why major distributors refused to finance the film for trust issues and let IFC do it anyway. Nevertheless, this made me look forward for Justin for his next screenplay pitch and see what he could bring new to the table other than acting well in this film. He's proved to be an actor and auteur.

The film doesn't just focus on the love story per se. As we delve into Sam's motivational ease, we're starting to care for whether what he's potent feelings towards Birdie is ideal to be in his own writing or not. The message is too simple to guess, but heck we all have our Sams within us. If Sam don't end up winning Birdie's heart, at least she ends up helping him close the chapter.

"A Case of You" is essentially sweet quirky rom-com that kept me howling with hilarity straight up. If you're a fan of Ruby Sparks, this touching gem is worth singling out.

This is a pretty good movie if there was an app to write movies using a vast template of clichés, stereotypes and characters and scenes you've seen a few thousand times before. It's not awful and its very well put together. Almost flawless. Technically it's like the robot version of a movie. And without irony, snarky, self criticism either. And to be fair it has some pretty funny small moments. And in a way it's refreshing to see a technically soulless perfect execution of an idea in an era of awful indie anarchist hipster junk still doing bad sound, shaky cam, weak lighting and an incoherent story.

But if you're looking for either something very good or new or interesting or even high drama, sitcom level high drama then no. You'll be disappointed. The machine isn't that sophisticated or adventurous for that. And that's a good thing because it will be entirely predictable, like comfort food.

A reviewer said that our protagonist was basing his interest in the girl solely on looks. That is not true. He saw her every day interacting with customers at the coffee shop. He liked her spirit.

Reviewers also can't understand why she would like our guy, especially since he was a faker. But you can't account for attraction. She saw the real him all along and liked it. Perhaps she was flattered that he made such an effort to accommodate her interests.

Women have intuition that guides them in relationships. She liked him. Let's accept that and move on.

Just Long's comedic timing was perfect in this one. It's like he was channeling Woody Allen without actually copying him. I also thought the cameos were fine. You had a fast-talking publisher, a gay midget coffee guy, an oafish ex-boyfriend, and a wacky guitar teacher, all played by stars. They were good. No one went over the top, which would have been very easy to do.

I think the best thing in this one was the roommate and his girlfriend. I'm not familiar with either actor, but they were natural, funny, down-to-earth, and genuinely helpful.

I don't know the lead girl, Ms. Wood, but she sure is lovely. If her character was not a child of hippies, she would have a jock boyfriend.

There was so much potential for this flick to fall into "Indie" stereotypes with a soundtrack, self-conscious performances, existential philosophy, and some depressing commentary on life. But this one didn't do that. The quirky pixie girl actually turned out to be a solid person with a forgiving soul and plenty of patience.

Although I would love to know how she supports herself.

One thing to note is that all her interests are wildly Left Wing, but she does explain that being due to her parentage. But I guess you could say that the one "Indie" stereotype is that the characters almost always love Godless, artsy stuff, and like most rom-coms, they seem to always live in New York. Trust me folks, N.Y. is not romantic at all. It's dirty, dangerous, crowded, and smelly.

Good movie. Not particularly memorable, but worth a date night. Enjoy.

I'll admit right up front I quit watching after an hour, not because it was bad but because it was nothing new. If you're unfamiliar with the "manic pixie" story, think of Natalie Portman in "Garden State" or Zooey Deschanel in everything she's ever done. Or if you want to get right down to it, there's the original and greatest manic pixie that ever was: Audrey Hepburn. The formula is you take 1 lovable loser guy, usually stiff, awkward or outright lame, and you pair him with a girl who is hazardously spontaneous and carefree as if she's still suffering the effects of novacaine from the dentist an hour earlier. Personally I love these kinds of films, but I love them because it's interesting to see the unique angle each one offers. But here in "A Case of You" there is no angle.

So what we get are endless scenes of the guy making a fool out of himself and the girl pirouetting through the scenes not noticing. There's a very weak, contrived "conflict" (the guy is facebook stalking her), but I don't have to watch the last 20 minutes to guess exactly how it ends. I'm guessing: revelation, confrontation, reconciliation. It's the standard formula just like the rest of the story was up to the point I turned it off.

You might enjoy this movie if you're not familiar with the manic pixie formula, but if you are, then watching this flick is sort of like reading a teen vampire book. You know exactly how it's going to go but you read it anyway because War & Peace gives you a headache.

Where this movie fails, beyond simply being a lukewarm copy of all the others, is that there is nothing quirky about the manic pixie (Evan Rachel Wood). There is no depth, no bizarre secret past, no soul. For example, in the excellent "Garden State" we get Natalie Portman who is a manic pixie on the surface but we soon learn that she suffers from a spectrum of problematic mental issues like pathological lying. It gives her character complexity and makes her interesting to us. Similarly if we look at Audrey Hepburn's manic pixie (take "Breakfast at Tiffany's") we get the same superficial happy-go-lucky exterior but we are fully aware that she is more or less a prostitute. Again, tremendous complexity to an otherwise predictable character.

But here in "A Case for You" there is absolutely no complexity. There is nothing out of the ordinary about either of the two, except that he's an awkward loser and she's a social butterfly.

I do give it points for some excellent (yet all too brief) cameos by Sam Rockwell as a hilariously egotistical guitar teacher, Peter Dinklage as a riotously funny coffee shop barista, and Vince Vaughn as a fast talking corporate suit who ought to have a Bluetooth headset surgically attached to his head. These scenes absolutely carried the film, but ultimately the story itself gives us nothing new.

Instead of this I would recommend any of the others I mentioned, as well as an unknown Japanese gem "Shiki-Jitsu" (Ritual) written by, and starring, Ayako Fujitani who is Steven Seagal's daughter (NO RESEMBLANCE!).

Sam (Justin Long) is a weary writer who novelizes movies. He turns already made movies into novels. He is smitten with the coffee shop girl Birdie Hazel (Evan Rachel Wood). So he uses her Facebook profile to bone up on all her favorites.

This is co-written by Justin Long. He's playing his try and true awkward uncomfortable character. There are a lot of great actors. Peter Dinklage, Sam Rockwell and Brendan Fraser are all going out of their way to play wild crazy characters. It would have been better if one of them played the bigger character of the best friend. Of course they were probably just doing Justin a favor. Evan Rachel Wood is lovely but she's not the rom-com type. There are mildly amusing performances. The central concept is a good idea to write a movie around. The ending is quite cheesy. The movie needs much better writing. It makes me appreciate how hard comedy is.