testing the limits of romantic comedy

Rating: 5/10 (24 December 2006)

'Hitch' is a movie to love for fans of Will Smith and for addicts of date movies and romantic comedy. Will Smith gives a nice pleasing performance in the role of "dr. Date" a dating counselor who is teaching and passing to his clients the magic and life experience of a charmer. He is matched by the attractive Eva Mendes, an investigative journalist who is set to de-mask the crook in the charmer (if there is one) but cannot avoid falling to the magic herself. Dialogs are quite witty, a good team of supporting actors is doing a good job with special mention for Kevin James whose comic talents deserve a better role I hope he will get some day - in a few words a very reasonable Will Smith romantic comedy. So, why not a better film? Probably because there are limits in the genre itself, and probably because after building a good story and bringing it to the pick of the conflict (to the extent there is a conflict in a romantic comedy) the author of the script does not know exactly what to do next, and lacking ideas the final part of the film is exactly what Hollywood does worst in rose-water conventional happy endings. So after the end of the movie best chances are that we will remember Will Smith but not the movie.