I found this movie in a store in Manhattan that sells tons of DVDs for insanely cheap prices (this was $3). Unlike Rock Star, this wasn’t a whole lot of fun to watch, but it definitely had promise to me. The cast for this suggests a crazy-bad romantic comedy on a tight budget— this is a 2007 movie where Matthew Lillard, Anne Heche, and Cuba Gooding Jr. have major roles. That’s gotta count for something, right?
Pretty weird revelation, then, when me and my girlfriend realized that this movie is actually a one-scene (aka entirely set in Cuba Gooding Jr.’s apartment) play-style, monologue-packed piece of drivel. When a character started talking, they wouldn’t stop talking for up to 8 minutes at a time, essentially repeating the same statement slightly reworded with epithets shuffled around, Jerry McGuire-style.
The first act of the film is the “men” talking about all their romantic troubles; after their gay friend shows up, Matthew Lillard goes on an intense anti-homophobic rant that was almost mesmerizing in how blindingly hateful it was. The gay character then goes on the defensive before spending the rest of the movie basically embodying every ugly stereotype known to humanity. I have to imagine that Matthew Lillard (as well as Andrew Daly, who played the gay character as well as Principal Cutler in the first season of Eastbound and Down) thought to themselves at one point, “Jesus, why are we doing this?” If they didn’t, they are assholes.
The second act is the “women” talking in Cuba Gooding Jr.’s bathroom, mostly about sex and sex acts. No depth, what you see is what you get. They call each other sluts a lot, and Gina Gershon talks about fellatio a lot. We actually had to pause the movie at this point to see if we wanted to continue watching or just give the fuck up.
We stuck around for the third act, which was the men and women meeting and mingling and so forth. Sean Bean’s character is a “really nice guy” who basically treats women like they’re morons who don’t know how to use Wikipedia or something, so he talks a lot about random bullshit, which is somehow “enchanting” and “wonderful”. Matthew Lillard and Gina Gershon hook up. Cuba Gooding Jr. yells at Shiri Appleby (who was in Entourage, right? God, that fucking show, who needs it) and then proposes to his girlfriend or something.
Also, there’s a weird “pole dance fantasy” sequence where all the women dance around in their underwear for the guys. It’s never explained and has no metaphorical intent whatsoever; it just exists, the same way this worthless waste of digital space of a film does.
The guy that wrote, directed, and starred in this movie, Mars Callahan, also was in the movie Clifford, which is hilarious and awesome. Also, the provided trivia for him on his IMDB page: “He is an accomplished pool player.” Nice.
Name: Larry Fitzmaurice
