Worth watching due to the narrative and the study of the male way of thinking

Rating: 8/10 (19 January 2005)

I had quite a few doubts about whether or not to see this film. First of all, Iben Hjejle is in it. No matter how international she thinks she's become, she's still Danish. I haven't seen that many of her films, but I've seen enough Danish films to back up following broad statement: Danes just can't act, in the majority of the cases. Second, no one I know who enjoy films have any clue as to whether or not it's worth watching. I'm talking about people who have seen even the least known 70's and 80's films and can describe what's good and bad about them. In detail. Third, this is a romance comedy. A romantic comedy. The genre of film that is without a doubt the easiest to make and mass-produce, because half of the worlds women go nuts over them and cry their eyeballs out, if there's at least one good-looking guy in it who doesn't portray a complete asshole. So, when I found this available for borrowing at the local library, I was uncertain at first, but eventually decided to check it out. I'm glad I did, though I wasn't too surprised by what I thought of Hjejle. I was surprised at how good this was for a romance comedy, though. I will make sure that my friends know that this is worth watching. I like how Cusack throughout the film addresses the camera and tells us exactly what he's thinking. Without any bull. He's entirely honest, and through this honesty, we feel connected to him. We feel what he feels and we understand why he feels this way. I doubt there is any other film that so perfectly describes how men feel about love and sex. We follow Cusack's character through a recounting of his Top Five worst breakups. First we get a brief retelling of the list, and then he delves into the list, as the film goes on, and he's in the middle of the last breakup on the list. The plot is very good, and has a fairly good pace, though I felt it moved both too slow and too fast at first, somehow. The acting is pretty much all good. No actors really surprised me. Hjejle was about as annoying as I had expected, albeit more tolerable than I had thought. Black was his typical annoying self. The characters are well-written and credible. I really enjoyed this film, and recognized just about everything about the way Cusack acted. Everything he did and most of what he said. The fantasy sequences, particularly the one where he fantasizes about what to do when he faces a guy he hates, are great stuff, something that every guy can relate to. As Cusack says in the interview featured on the DVD: what's great is that it reveals the dark sides of us, of our love lives and relationships. I recommend this very good film to anyone. Yes, anyone. If you can sit through two hours of, basically, a study of the common male's thinking, and you can enjoy a somewhat non-Hollywood movie, you should see this film. It's not the best out there, but I doubt there is or can be a better movie about this subject. 8/10