It's that special week in February this week, where you are expected to fork over all of your money to huge corporations for token gestures of affection that will fleetingly demonstrate your commitment to a significant other... So no, I'm not big on Valentine's Day. Me and my partner don't really do it, we go for dates and treat each other all year round instead, but that's part of what makes our long distance relationship work. And I'm probably not the romantic type. As a consequence, I don't really watch romance films. I know, shocker right? But I decided, since it's Valentine's week that this weeks film choice had to be a dodgy, crappy chickflick. And I certainly may have found the dodgiest chickflick of them all...
Kenna (Colleen Porch) is a cocktail waitress and aspiring Photographer, juggling 2 boyfriends at the same time; Jock Executive Martin (David Gail) and Radio DJ / Bartender Jeff played by a very young looking Bradley Cooper. Out of the blue she gets a phone call from her estranged Mother but that gets put on ice for the moment and goes nowhere... meanwhile Kenna is forced to choose between a fancy corporate dinner with Martin or celebrating her anniversary with Jeff and despite deciding on Jeff the 2 end the night with an argument. Later, at Kenna's debut photography exhibition she is reunited with her estranged Mother, but clearly disgruntled at being left behind the 2 only argue with Kenna leaving. Ultimately tensions between the 2 boyfriends boil over resulting in the worst fight scene ever partially filmed in cinematic history and Kenna has to pawn her camera (despite declaring earlier she wants to make it as a Photographer?) to pay their bail. She then reunites with her mother and buries the vendetta and the film ends with some bizarre message about making adult choices...?
Right off the bat, this film opens with some of the worst fake orgasming I have ever heard (and I'll resist the urge to make a joke about my own sex life here...) and Bradley Cooper and Colleen Porch take part in one of the worst, unsexiest sex scenes I think I have ever seen. This was just... I'm almost speechless. There was zero chemistry between either pair of actors and scenes of affection just looked so painfully forced it was cringe to watch.
I did not understand Kenna's motives one bit. I mean, it could be down to a gender barrier, but she spends the entire film bouncing away any attempt by either of her boyfriends to develop the relationship or attempt to figure out what the motives of the relationship even are, and just flips it into an argument resulting in a breakdown in communication. I mean, given that both sets of blokes aren't exactly the most spotless, stellar characters they at least both approach the relationship with honesty and commitment to it which every time gets thrown back in their faces by Kenna when they try to develop things further?! Throughout the film there are various flash backs demonstrating Kenna's dysfunctional relationship with her Father and the absence of her Mother which I suppose serves to justify Kenna's aversion to commitment and her attitude to the relationships but all it serves to do is contribute to her self destructive behaviour despite both sets of boyfriends trying to help her through it. To give the movie it's due, she at least partially admits that at the end but it does nothing to demonstrate how it negatively affected her and instead, kind of glamorizes it?
I got nothing from the development of the story, it taught me nothing, it demonstrated nothing, only that acting like you don't want to commit to a relationship but never being straight up honest about it will only lead to problems. But we have to turn to the production. The entire movie felt like it was shot, and shot poorly, and the audio dubbed over. I don't know if that was just the version I watched, or if it actually was (I haven't bothered to google it and check yet) but it gave the whole film a kind of disconnected feel, and really damaged the immersion in what little meaningful dialogue there was between the characters on screen. Very early on I was immediately getting very 'The Room' vibes from this film (and I will never review that movie here, promise) for it's low rate production, corny soundtrack and scriptpasta dialogue. It flitted from scene to scene of Kenna partying, Kenna meeting one of the guys and leading them on some more, one of the guys chatting to their mates about Kenna without ever really going anywhere, just meandering around. The movie got one thing right, and that was the flashback scenes which genuinely looked like credible flashbacks; shot with desaturated colours and grainy film stock and characters dressed and fashioned as they would have been in the late 70's / early 80's. And for the most part that at least helped to flesh out the reasoning behind Kenna's commitment issues but that was about it. You learn nothing about Martin or Jeff, or anybody else for that matter. None of the characters are ever really given any further development, Kenna included.
By definition "bad" would not just be the absence of good but also suggest the presence of something negative. And that wasn't really here. It just had... nothing... it was 1 hour 23 minutes of just... things. You could have trimmed this movie to half an hour and it wouldn't have suffered any further. And it had nothing for me. I learned nothing. Benefited in no way whatsoever. But equally I didn't suffer. It just... was... I dunno, 1 out of 5? For having a sexy, young Bradley Cooper?
