THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2003
FILM
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN = 13
'A Guy Thing' lacks originality, humor, plot
REVIEW
Some movies are just meant to be on television. They belong there. These movies should just skip the theater, skip video, skip HBO, skip network TV and go straight to cable. Comedy Central, in particular, seems the appropriate place for them. A Guy Thing is one of those movies.
Aaron Passman apassman@kansan.com
It's the story of soon-to-be-married Paul (Jason Lee) who, after his bachelor party, wakes up with a woman who isn't his fiancée. This woman is Becky (Julia Stiles), a free spirit who can't hold down a job and, as luck would have it, is also Paul's fiancée's cousin. Paul can't bring himself to confess to his fiancée, and further run-ins with Becky lead to awkward situations and ultimately infatuation. Eventually, Paul realizes he's in love with Becky. (Wow, didn't see that one coming?) Soon you come to find you've wasted 90 minutes of your life that you can't have back.
One of the biggest problems with A Guy
Thing is that the characters are cardboard characters placed in unrealistic situations. Neither Paul nor his fiancée Karen (Selma Blair) seems particularly in love with one another, and all the characters act like lifeless caricatures that could have been real if more effort had been put into fleshing them out.
A Guy Thing sets up a series of running gags, which are intended to be funny but end up failing miserably. Aspects of the plot have been done before: Becky's jealous, unstable ex-boyfriend; Paul's bizarre parents; masturbation jokes; waiting for someone to object at a wedding. Some scenes (such as when Paul gets crabs and runs into his future mother-in-law at the pharmacy) are cringe-inducingly bad.
The most disappointing part of the movie is Lee. He hasn't yet proven that he can hold up the leading role in a film. His two best movies, Almost Famous and Mallrats, succeeded because he was more of a sidekick than anything else. In these films, Lee's character had a clear, distinct personality. Try finding any personality in Lee's character in A Guy Thing. Apart from an overactive imagination (a minor character trait that never really goes anywhere), Paul is flat, lifeless and boring.
The silver lining to this black cloud of cinematic doom is the music. Little snippets of great songs by great bands such as Wilco, The Shins and Ben Kweller show up in the
'A GUY THING' ... D
Starring Jason Lee and Julia Stiles
Rated PG-13 for language, crude humor, some sexual content and drug references
Playing at South Wind 12,3433 Iowa St.
background from time to time, but pay attention or you'll miss them. If just a shred of the thought and creativity that went into choosing the music in A Guy Thing had gone into the script and characters, the movie might not have been so forgettable.
If you miss it in the theater, don't worry. Odds are that this one will be on Comedy Central soon.
Passman is a Towanda senior in journalism and film.
'Kansan' reviewer rates rentals average to extraordinary
About a Boy
About a Boy is an extraordinary balancing act from American Pie co-directors Chris and Paul Weitz. The movie stars Hugh Grant as a 21st-century loner who befriends a socially troubled London boy with a suicidal mum. About a Boy is really about the absence of fathers and consumer-age solitude. Its humor and emotion work on the comedy-drama level of Woody Allen's heyday.
Grade: A
FeardotCom
The Internet, a purportedly autonomous outlet where anyone can
reach out to anyone, is going to inspire a great horror movie one day. FeardotCom isn't it. But after you suffer through its literally torturous opening half, the movie strips away all semblances of logic and becomes a freaky, enjoyable trip.
REVIEW
Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone and Stephen Rea manage to keep straight faces through some pretty silly dialogue. Nicholas Pike's score is rich and haunting, and the shock-cut imagery leaves you craving for a Tool concert. William Malone, who also directed House on Haunted Hill, is of a new, derivative school of stylish horror directors, of which Paul Anderson (Event Horizon) is the master.
Grade: B-
Stephen Shupe
sshupe@kansan.com
Blue Crush
Kate Bosworth is an easy-on-the-eyes distraction in Blue Crush, so much so that it took me nearly 20 minutes to realize this movie had no plot. Bosworth surfs with
gal-pals Michelle Rodriguez and Sanoe Lake as they moonlight during the day as maids with big dreams. Director John Stockwell remains stingy on the close-ups to keep the watcher's attention away from how thin these characters are.
I have a feeling Blue Crush will play well in sorority houses, where the movie's theme of girl-power is sure to resonate. The underwater photography is gorgeous, but I prefer Stockwell's previous effort the red-hot interracial romance crazy/beautiful.
Grade: C+
Shupe is an Augusta graduate student in journalism.
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