Guy Thing

When I saw the trailers for this movie, I thought it was going to be a light-hearted comedy with a nice little romance to carry it through.

Oh no.

This turned out to be my worse nightmare. Not really, but I was greatly disappointed.

The Story
Paul (Jason Lee) is on the verge of getting married to the perfect girl, Karen (Selma Blair) - six days away and counting! The morning after his bachelor party, he wakes up in his bed to find one of the "dancers", Becky (Julia Stiles) naked as a jaybird, all wrapped up comfy in his sheets.

Thinking that he has cheated on his fiancee, Paul spends a lot of time covering his tracks. Just when he thinks everything is back to normal, he finds out that Becky is actually Karen's cousin. And to complicate matters even more, Becky has an ex-boyfriend (Lochlyn Munro), a lunatic cop who is having her followed. Guess what...he has PICTURES of those two together.

Becky and Paul bond together to get the negatives so that no one knows about their night together.

Does Karen find out about Paul and Becky?

Do Paul and Karen get married?

Do you really care? Yeh, I didn't think so.

What Was Bad - or - A Primer On How To Make A Bad Movie
When the movie opened up, I was hopeful. Mark Mothersbaugh took care of the musical stuff and as we all know, the mastermind behind Devo has a fantastic ear for what music works best in a film.

The story starts unfolding with the bachelor party. Alright. Okay. Nothing too unusual. It followed the same kind of stuff you see in every other movie about bachelor parties. Then Julia Stiles enters the picture and that's when it all started going downhill.

Now you know, I really like Julia. But for some reason, in this entire film, she looked uncomfortable. It's like her body was there, but she mentally checked out. Okay, well one mediocre performance doesn't ruin an entire film.

The downhill trip continued once the director (Chris Koch) made Jason Lee do slapstick comedy. Jason is a funny guy. But not in the physical-ha-hah-Three Stooges Type of Way. He's the kind of guy that is funny when he uses biting sarcasm, you know - like in Chasing Amy and Mallrats. Those were funny Jason Lee moments.

Then enter Selma Blair. I'm quite used to her playing the chick that gets the raw deal (Legally Blonde, Cruel Intentions). Her uppidity and out of place characters are usually fun to poke at because she gives them slight idiosyncrasies that make them almost human. Here, her character has no personality. And chemistry with Jason or anyone else? Completely missing.

And speaking of chemistry, Jason and Julia were like brother and sister - if that close. I think that they only kissed once (at the end) and it was embarrassing to watch.

I did mention a lot of the other characters in the movie because really - they had little point in existing. There is one I will mention. James Brolin turns in an embarrassing performance as Selma Blair's father. Often, I hid my face in my shirt to avoid his interactions. Is Ba-Ba not keeping her main squeeze busy?

Let's get back to the guy responsible for making the worst movie of the year so far. Mr. Koch, who has directed episodes of Malcolm In The Middle and the movie Snow Day thought he was being a hip guy in a couple of spots. There was a few times where he let Jason's character imagine the outcome of a discussion with a character. Then, the real outcome would be shown. And? And nothing. It did nothing for me. It bored me.

Then, he also used camera slicing to try to make the movie more "hipper".

Let's spread the love around a little more, shall we? The plot wasn't focused. It had no life. It had no umph in it.

The main writer - Greg Glienna, who wrote Meet The Parents - is a poor writer. My evidence? The main message of Paul marrying the wrong woman got lost in all of the little subplots going on. I suppose though that he'll blame that on the additional four writers that were brought on to help him. Let's count off the number of sub-plots...I think that there were four of them. Maybe the film was riddled with all of these other distractions because he couldn't write anything decent to begin with (but nobody found out until after filming started).

There were a couple of funny moments in the film but I'm almost angry that I laughed at them because they were cheap (i.e. uptight parents acting out after ingesting pot that that they didn't know about).

Yeh, I know I'm being harsh but I felt like I was just used up like a cheap john, made to pay in order for Jason Lee to pimp himself for a 3 million dollar salary.

Any bets on if this film will recoup that amount through box office receipts??? Um, I don't think so.