Giving It Up

Rating:
Summary: Give up on this film.
Review: It's tasteless and it has no script. That's about it. Tries to be a sexy movie but it looks more like a cheap TV add.

Rating:
Summary: The lovechild of "Sex & the City" and "What Women Want"!
Review: A smarter, more-thinking person's romantic comedy. A movie that seems to have filtered out the obnoxious slapstick, point A to point B theme, trite plot points, dumb characters, monotone dialouge and Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan's routines.

Oh, there are quite a few cliches' in this movie, all right. The playboy who's tired of the game and wants to settle down, the bookish love interest who has no patience for his antics, the sexist supporting characters, the geek, the unobtainable finally obtained... only to realize that...

But "Giving it Up" is more than that. It doesn't rely entirely on that as so many other rom-coms do. "GIU" is a well-played, thoughtfully-written, smartly concieved look at men, women and their views on sex and drelationships.

It takes the time-honored storyline of the playboy with the princely lifestyle who's willing to give it all up for one woman and circles it around a group of genuinely human and realistic characters. Feuerstein is a charmer, Ben Weber and James Lesure (From "For Your Love") are convincing and likeable as his best friends.

And although it sounds like the storyline from "What Women Want" (which also featured Feuerstein), no two movies could possibly be more polar opposite. Ari Larter as the foul and lecherous super-supermodel Amber is also good for a few laughs.

See it alone for the near Oscar-worthy performance of the magnificent Dabney Coleman, more hard-nosed, sexist and snarling than ever.

*** 1/2

Also recommended-- other off-beat ROMANTIC comedies: High Fidelity, Say Anything..., What Women Want, When Harry Met Sally, The Sure Thing, Chasing Amy and Shallow Hal.

Rating:
Summary: Big Yawn, deserves 1/2 a star
Review: I was looking for a fun rompy romantic comedy. What I got was flaccid mediocrity. It was poorly acted, had unappealing characters, a choppy plot, really, really bad cinimatography and awful sound quality. I was kind of bored and dissappointed considering the great cast and the potential for rollicking "Sex and the City" type fun. What happens is this ad exec sleeps with a different woman every night. At least he feels bad that he can't remember their names. He falls for a new woman in his office, but pretends not to be attracted to her because she's "bookish," which she isn't at all. He sleeps with her anyway. He also has a thing for this beautiful model who he can only admire if her imperfections are airbrushed out. Suddenly, he discovers he's lonely. The bookish woman suggests he see a shrink. The shrink is a creep, but our lonely guy continues to see him. And watching him sit around with his friends talking about their sex lives is as cringing as fingernails on a chalkboard. The Sex Addicts group he joins is mind-numbingly awful. He realizes he's in love with bookish woman while in bed with the "woman of his dreams," the model, and so he decides to become celebate to win his new love's heart. It only goes downhill from there. It really wants to be an endearing, charming movie, but falls very short. Don't waste your time or money.

Rating:
Summary: Ishtar was a better movie...
Review: Predictable, bad writing, bad acting and stupid all rolled into one.

Sadly and embarassingly, I picked this flick up because I liked this past season's Thursday night mindlessness of "Good Morning Miami" with Mark Fuerstein. This 90 minute monstrosity was no Good Morning Miami.

Rating:
Summary: Ishtar was a better movie...
Review: Predictable, bad writing, bad acting and stupid all rolled into one.

Sadly and embarassingly, I picked this flick up because I liked this past season's Thursday night mindlessness of "Good Morning Miami" with Mark Fuerstein. This 90 minute monstrosity was no Good Morning Miami.

Rating:
Summary: The same old ruse
Review: This movie knows that it is mostly worthless. It was never intended to rack up positive critic's reviews. Instead, it is 90 min or so of uninspired reflection wrapped in a pretty package. That packaging, of course, is the lovely Ali Larter. The strategy is to paste Ms. Larter over the majority of the cover, and try to dupe those browsing the video store that her screen time will be relatively proportional to her spot on the cover. This is not the case, and her one sexy scene was diluted and weak, positivly PG-13 by todays standards. If you can think of any other reason to watch this movie (Good Morning, Miami fans perhaps) let me know. Until then, don't judge todays DVDs by their covers.

Rating:
Summary: The same old ruse
Review: This movie knows that it is mostly worthless. It was never intended to rack up positive critic's reviews. Instead, it is 90 min or so of uninspired reflection wrapped in a pretty package. That packaging, of course, is the lovely Ali Larter. The strategy is to paste Ms. Larter over the majority of the cover, and try to dupe those browsing the video store that her screen time will be relatively proportional to her spot on the cover. This is not the case, and her one sexy scene was diluted and weak, positivly PG-13 by todays standards. If you can think of any other reason to watch this movie (Good Morning, Miami fans perhaps) let me know. Until then, don't judge todays DVDs by their covers.