Beauty & the Briefcase

"Lane Daniels" (Hillary Duff) is an aspiring young writer living in New York City who finds it hard to meet single, young men. As luck would have it her roommate "Joanne" (Amanda Walsh) just happens to know somebody at Cosmo Magazine who wants an article written about dating within the business world and so Lane decides to accept the job assignment and goes undercover working for a financial firm on Wall Street. One condition however is that she can only date men wearing suits who work in the business world. Little does she know that she is about to meet the man of her dreams and he doesn't meet this qualification. This creates a real dilemma for her. Now rather than reveal any more of this film and risk ruining it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that for a "made-for-television" romantic-comedy this particular movie wasn't too bad. Admittedly, while I would have preferred more comedy and less romance, the performance of Hillary Duff was sufficient to keep the movie somewhat enjoyable and because of that I rate it as about average.

I found this movie to be surprising. Well, of course I had my initial reservations about the movie in advance, being a chick flick and having Hillary Duff in it and all. But still, this movie turned out to be kind of alright.

The story, well, or what is supposed to be the story, is kind of far fetched, and a bit too quirky. But you get to live with that, because the actual story becomes part of the background fairly quickly.

What drives this movie are the characters, and the inevitable thing that you know will happen at the end - and it does! You quickly get immersed in the characters, and they are fairly nicely portrayed from everyone involved.

I actually found Hillary Duff, Matt Dallas and Michael McMillian to do quite a good job here. And I am not really much of a fan of Hillary Duff, but she pulled this one off nicely enough.

Of course, this sassy kind of romantic movie is intended to a female teen audience, and if you fall into that category, this movie would go straight home with you. I found the movie, however, to be fairly entertaining, though it is not a movie I will watch a second time around.

For a movie of this caliber, it is not too shabby, though it is sassy!

Lame gets what lame wants. The result is this film. I guess lame is an understatement, but I fare poorly in grammar. So pardon me.

I wouldn't even call it a chick flick, because it is not. It is much lamer, cheesier, and uninteresting. Miss Congeniality is a chick flick, even Confessions of a Shopaholic is a chick flick, but this film is just not. This film is an epic failure! I tried to be very subjective, meaning to say that I tried not to link her with her previous acting in Lizzie McGuire. But try as I might, I just can't help it. This film smacks of that Lizzie McGuire that Hillary Duff just can't shake off her acting. I watched her previous film, According to Greta and I liked it the film because she do away from her usual acting, but in this film, she is the exact copy of her acting in Lizzie McGuire.

I am very disappointed in this film, with the lack of substance, and sans creativity. A two is the best, and it solely based on the lead actor who managed to pull up something to salvage points for this otherwise abominable film.

This movie, is truly an insult to younger women in or not in the corporate world. Lane is a superficial bimbo. She seems to think she can get just pretty much anything she imagines, without thinking about the consequences. She is a little over confident about her appearance and her intellect, which is kinda zero. And that stupid list of hers? What type of woman actually dates like that? She seems to be living in some dumb blond world. Oh oops, she is kinda blond isn't her? If this is how woman think they should act like to gain attention from others, it really is quite lame. The best word used in the entire movie? 'Flimsy' which best describes, Lane. The second she actually finds an intelligent man, who manages to carry a conversation, she gets bored. Oh god, and no one writes like that not even for magazine material.

Even for a lame B-grade teen movie, this fails on many levels. I mean, I'm a journalist myself and my job is NOTHING like what Lane does. I still cannot believe this movie did not get shelved and was actually released. Those who actually did enjoy this movie, I'm sorry to say must be those who live their life's out off a chick flick romance novel.

Every conversation, sounded like it was written by and for 12 year olds. I am truly sad that I actually lasted till the end of this pathetic excuse of a movie.

'' Beauty And The Briefcase '' is a romantic comedy of the 2000's and has those vibes of an easy to watch movie. Sure, the plot isn't groundbreaking or even logical at times, but, for what it promises, it serves. It is light, it has its funny moments, it has some romance, some girlfriend action, an office setting, a magazine setting (of course it wouldn't have been a romantic comedy of the 2000's if it didn't), and some fluff.

The performances were good enough as well, as to support the story and deliver enjoyable characters.

The pace was okay too, though the ending was rushed and could have been handled better.