Disappointed

Rating: Null/10 (21 April 2001)

I wanted very much to like this movie and I did like Renee, but the script was so bad with contrived, movie-length misunderstandings, protracted gags, and unearned sentimentality that it ruined it for me. A poorly structured script and a title character who is a bit bitchy, a bit needy, and a bit foolish. The plot is some tired hooey about a young single gal who frets over frivolous things, gets duped by several would-be suitors who turn out unsurprisingly to be slimeballs, and ends up with the man that no one (except perhaps a middle-school student with half a brain) expected her to end up with. A dozen painfully trite sitcom situations, and a silly happy ending (after, of course, the most thoroughly unconvincing excuse for pre-climactic suspense I've ever seen). This is the sort of film that makes you feel like a heel if you don't have a knee-slapping, foot-tapping wonderful time, but I have to admit I did not enjoy it. The film lacks a center, has no sense of rhythm, and contains no genuine insights into the plight of the single girl, except for those harvested from a lifetime watching television sitcoms and television-sitcom-derived movies.
I left the film feeling empty, and wearing an ebbing smile.