February 11th, 2008
8. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days (2003)
A nasty battle of wills crowbarred into a romantic comedy, How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days proves that there's no better path to everlasting love than self-serving deception. Inhabiting perhaps the two biggest modern rom-com stereotypes, Plucky Magazine Girl Kate Hudson and Cocky Advertising Guy Matthew McConaughey get trapped in a faux relationship, as she attempts to win him and drive him off within 10 days for an article she's writing, while he simultaneously tries to win a bet that he can make any woman fall in love with him in—you guessed it—10 days. Though McConaughey and Hudson's chemistry and overall likeability obscure the plot's latent malice, the fact remains that they spend the majority of the movie trying to screw each other over.
9. Good Luck Chuck (2007)
Why limit yourself to a single-comedy killing gimmick when you can double up for twice the inanity? That's the thinking behind the risible gross-out romantic comedy Good Luck Chuck, a lowbrow romp that explores what happens when the world's klutziest gal (Jessica Alba) meets a man (Dane Cook) who brings romantic luck to every woman he has sex with. Alba flails her way through a series of awkward pratfalls while the filmmakers strain desperately to eke laughs from Cook's dalliances with a bevy of marriage-minded lookers and a pair of morbidly obese grotesques. Hilarity fails to ensue.
10. Overboard (1987)
In a love story for the ages, grubby contractor Kurt Russell suffers the barbs of uppity rich girl Goldie Hawn before she cheats him out of a paycheck. When Hawn falls off of her yacht and washes up with acute amnesia, Russell comes to her "rescue"—which in this case means kidnapping her, convincing her they're married, and forcing her to look after his three hellions and perform humiliating chores until he gets his revenge. The chemistry between the real-life offscreen couple aside, there's a huge ick factor (not to mention a criminal, morally repellent factor) here: Russell dresses Hawn in his dead wife's clothes, cuts her off from the outside world, and basically rapes her under false pretenses until Stockholm syndrome kicks in and she grows to love him. In fact, swap out Russell and Hawn for Eric Roberts and Tori Spelling, and you've got a great victimization story for Lifetime. (Suggested title: Drowning In Deception).
11. Hello Again (1987)
In the Big Book Of Hollywood Miscalculations, there's a place for Shelley Long's decision to leave Cheers in 1987 to pursue a film career. Cheers became one of the best-loved television shows of all time, and Long's movie career quickly tanked. Hello Again, filmed before her final season on Cheers, makes her choice even more baffling. Long plays Lucy Robinson, who meets an untimely death when she chokes on a chicken ball. After her death, everyone quickly moves on—husband Corbin Bernsen marries Long's friend Sela Ward—except Long's kooky sister Judith Ivey, owner of an occult bookstore. On the one-year anniversary of Long's death, Ivey casts a spell to raise Long from the dead. It works, but with a catch: Long has to find true love within 30 days, or she'll die again. Good thing Gabriel Byrne, the handsome ER doctor who tried to save her, is available.
12. What Women Want (2000)
Mel Gibson plays a womanizing ad man who can suddenly hear women's thoughts. Will it change him? Or will it just help him score with Helen Hunt? The gimmick of suave stud Gibson learning that women secretly fear and loathe him isn't a bad starting point for a romantic comedy, but What Women Want director Nancy Meyers screws up the balance between the two leads, making Gibson a likeable oaf and Hunt a mewling wimp who was apparently talented enough to become Gibson's boss, but is too weak to stand up to him when he starts stealing her ideas. Also, while people probably do think cogent, complete sentences to themselves when they're sitting silently, they probably don't do it while they're in the middle of a conversation. And if they do, they don't react outwardly to the thoughts in their head. At one point, Hunt catches herself looking at Gibson's crotch, and recoils as though she's been punched in the face. If she did that in the real world, she'd be doing the rest of her inexplicable contorting in a sanitarium.
13. He Said, She Said (1991)
After When Harry Met Sally, romantic comedies based on the "Hey, men and women sure are different!" concept were thick on the ground, with a surprising number of them using journalism and/or politics as a hook. In He Said, She Said, Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins play newspaper columnists (and later television editorialists) who present opposing sides of local issues: the conservative regular-guy side versus the touchy-feely liberal side. They're also lovers who remember the details of their romance differently—a gimmick which directors Ken Kwapis and Marissa Silver convey by telling their story first from Bacon's perspective, then from Perkins'. This is one of those ideas that probably sounded like a winner in the pitch room, but in order to make it work, Kwapis and Silver (and screenwriter Brian Hohlfeld) have to exaggerate the differences between Bacon and Perkins to such a degree that the concept really becomes, "Hey, contrived movie characters sure are different!"
14. 40 Days And 40 Nights (2002)
Josh Hartnett has a problem: After a brutal breakup, he decides to give up sex for Lent, only to fall in love with Shannyn Sossamon during his time off. What's a celibate twentysomething to do? There's a lot that gets in the way of the supposed tension here. First, it expects an audience of schlubs who've probably done 40-day sexless stretches involuntarily plenty of times, and without having to fend off a city full of willing hotties. Then it requires Hartnett to keep quiet about his vow, when chances are that most prospective girlfriends would find it kind of noble, even if there is money riding on it. Finally, it's only Lent. Screw it.
« Previous | 1 | 2
- Comments