hubcap18

I just don't quite "get" this film, nor do I see where all the positive reviews came from. I decided to check out this film because I like Clea DuVall's work (The Faculty, Identity, and Girl, Interrupted) and the premise sounded kind of interesting. Alan Arkin gives a good performance, but he can't save this film. The film is comprised of vignettes focus on four basic groups of characters: lawyers, office workers, cleaning ladies, and College professors and students. But almost nothing exciting or remarkable happens in this film, nothing that really made me wonder what would happen next or how this film would turn out. All I wanted was for this film to finally end, but I fell asleep before then and had to use the scene selection. Overall, this was a pretty dull viewing experience.

I'm generally not a big fan of romantic comedies, because they tend to focus more on the romantic than the comedy, but this was a good one. Jimmy Fallon plays Ben, a school teacher and Drew Barrymore plays Lindsey, his love interest and an accountant. They meet cute and everything seems to be going great until there's a stumbling block, Ben's obsession with the Boston Red Sox. Especially nice is the first date where Ben comes to Lindsey's place, only to find she's very sick, suffering from food poisoning. He comes in anyway, and minutes later, he's cleaning up her vomit in the bathroom, brushing the dog's teeth(I didn't quite get that), helping her change into her nightgown(says he won't look but he does), and even sleeps on her couch--on the FIRST date! How sweet is that? Overall pretty satisfying, but the credit start rolling and I see directed by Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly? That was a real surprise since I loathe their work (except for Me, Myself, and Irene). This was nothing like a Farrelly brothers movie! No gross-out or immature Jokes!

Nothing about his movie stands out as really positive or negative. It's really a pretty light run-of-the-mill drama. The whole young adult child seeks freedom to go against old-fashioned traditional values of family plot has been done plenty of times before, and quite frankly has been done better. In this case, the story centers around Jess(Parminder Nagra), an Indian girl living in England who dreams of playing soccer professionally. Her parents however, won't have it, wanting her to marry an Indian boy and learn how to cook. Really no surprises in the plot, this movie is average in every way. The one thing that raises my rating to a six is the well-filmed soccer scenes and a few funny moments. For instance, the mother of Jules(Kiera Knightley) trying to deter her daughter from playing soccer: "There's a reason why Sporty Spice is the only one without a man."