SoTrumpBelieve Must See Movie...

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

charlytully The protagonist of this film, Ira Black (Chris Messina)--who has two analysts for parents and was preconceived as the glue for their upcoming marriage--is studying to become an analyst himself, and has been in therapy with the same analyst for 12 years. (The movie emphasizes the difference between psychiatrists and analysts, which boils down to: psychiatrists talk, while analysts listen--or daydream, plot infidelities, write their Hannuka cards, etc., etc.) Every day Ira breakfasts at a diner, but can never order by combo number, and always calls back his long-suffering "Greek waiter" (Spiro Malas) multiple times with wishy-washy additions and deletions (Ira never "knows" his own mind). Feeling fat, he decides to join New York City's famed Paris Health Club (actually used extensively as a filming site), where he meets serial nymphomaniac Abby (Jennifer Westfeldt), who always knows her mind--and takes out food exclusively from McDonald's. Beyond being seen with the offerings of the Golden Arches several times (and extolling the virtue of eating your fries while they're fresh and hot), Abby's ad jingle-producing dad Michael Willoughby (Fred Willard) apparently gets a piece of the McDonald's ad account. Maybe the video stores and down-loaders should be required to couple this rental with Morgan Spurlock's SUPERSIZE ME to counteract IRA & ABBY'S clearest message: if you eat at independent restaurants with character you're a neurotic wimp, but if you're loyal to McDonald's you're a fun-loving problem-solver who's good in bed. Hopefully this flick's producers (Declan Baldwin, Ged Dickersin, Ilana Levine, Stu Pollard, Douglas G. Smith, Jennifer Westfeldt, and Brad Zions) are each getting a lifetime of free clogged arteries--oops, I mean free food--from McDonald's.

T Y I liked this better when it was called about 20 other titles. Basically this steals the entire concept from Dharma and Greg with impunity. It was funnier as a sitcom. It was also more palatable in half hour bursts. Here the movie runs through about two and half romantic comedies worth of twists and situations, developing in an artistically random order. Half as many, with adequate writing would have been just fine. This showers viewers with clichés like a spring storm.The characters are dumb so they can keep doing ethically naive, behaviorally idiotic things. These strangle-able, irritating naifs stumble over cliché after cliché, and are so ignorant (as are fans of this crap) that they don't know they're clichés. Somehow there's still time for product placement. Skip it, it's not worth your time.

fpk28 This film was one of the worst I have seen in years. The script reminded me of a childhood game where you supply random nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and then insert them into a previously written paragraph. Actually, the game was funnier than this movie. The worst aspect of this film is the lack of authenticity that permeates the film. None of the characters has a personality; they all behave as if they were in a bad sitcom, reciting random lines that are supposed to be quirky but which are trivial at best. In addition, none of the characters displays even a cursory knowledge of the profession they are supposed to be in. For example, Ira is supposed to be working on a dissertation, but you never hear him talk about it or even mention what university he is supposed to attend. As for intelligence, Ira exhibits no more brain activity than a fruit fly. He makes no cultural or scientific references in the entire movie, making it impossible to determine what his "dissertation" might be. As for Abby, she is supposed to be a gym instructor, and maybe a physical therapist, but all she does is munch on junk food and spew out psychobabble. I have been in physical therapy, and I certainly never encountered anyone as vapid as Abby. This adds up to a film without any value. In a Woody Allen film you will hear references to literature, philosophy, and history, and the sound track will frequently feature classical and jazz music that meshes with the action (for example, Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" quartet in his "Crimes and Misdemeanors"). In this film, you have a cultural void. Sadly, the films I see from Iran and Bangladesh at the Montreal Film Festival have more cultural references than this film. Another terrible aspect of the film is its use of clichés. In one scene, the characters are forced to go into the subway (horrors!), and of course there is a man who brandishes a pistol and holds up the people in the car. Naturally, Abby has to make this funny, so she takes up a collection. To those of us who used the subway for decades, and whose chief concern was trying to deal with the delays and the inaudible sound system, this paranoid view of the subway is one more false note in the movie. Later, a flashback serves as an excuse for a sick adolescent male fantasy, as Ira imagines that Abby makes out with all the men in the car. I know that movies that display firearms have a better chance of getting distribution, and that women behaving licentiously (in other bad films women usually kiss other women for no reason) tends to be seen as edgy, but these devices are presented in an extremely contrived manner. In short, you would be hard pressed to find a movie with less content or intelligence.

jcwla It's the kind of movie I hate with every fiber of my being: overwritten in a self-congratulatory way, talky with nobody saying anything interesting or substantial, whiny, preposterous in every detail -- not a single word or action bears any resemblance to anything that has ever happened on planet Earth -- profoundly unfunny, overstuffed with sketched-out characters but lacking a single one to care for, much less like or root for, replete with undertalented actors and a couple of talented ones all mugging their way through (why bother being human when the script is SO false?), predictable whenever it thinks it's taking a chance, trite when it thinks it's being original. It takes place entirely in Movieland -- that it gets its Manhattan geography all wrong on Ira's opening-credits walk through the city was the first clue -- and succeeds almost uncannily at producing the opposite of the desired reaction in every scene: when the filmmakers aimed for sweetness and romance, they instead delivered crassness and vulgarity; when they aimed for Woody Allen-style neuroticism, they found only snarkiness and endless therapist clichés; when they aimed for laughs, they got only stone faces from my audience. It's this year's equivalent of 2001's "All Over the Guy," with Judith Light in the Andrea Martin role. Avoid it like the plague.