Pale comedy, light entertainment

Rating: 5/10 (22 May 2007)

One can understand why some people think this film is a valid and even enjoyable way to pass time. I first saw this movie during a bus trip on the West Coast of NZ, the most remarkable thing about it was that it managed to stretch out an already long trip until you felt impatient to leave the bus. On a purely observational point the female half of the audience were the ones getting up, chatting, smiling and laughing after this movie, while most of the men had either given up watching it or fallen asleep. Perhaps that serves to illuminate why this movie gets a somewhat skewed rating both on IMDb and elsewhere.
One thing this movie does to is market exceptionally well, it knows perfectly well what it is and that it has a broad target audience, and while some viewers may find the rampant re-use of tired old clichés stultifying the trailer will at least have given you an idea of the movie itself. Having said that the trailer really does give away ALL of the decent jokes in the movie, from Will Smith's allergy problem to the gentle parodying of male relations.
The plot, quite frankly, is ridiculous and insulting if you try to take it seriously for even just a moment, but hey, it's Hollywood and movies just like Hitch are churned out in unfortunate quantities for the viewing public. Hitch is definitely not the worst of these that I've seen so far, but if I was channel surfing it would be one to miss personally. There are three distinct plot lines following the three most prominent characters and eventually, following tradition for a romcom, they all merge into one big happy ending #SPOILER#(and a wedding just to draw in those extra female viewers).
You could analyse the movie industry all day but at the end of it Hitch is a cash-cow of a movie, light on production cost, light on writing development, light on acting fees (the movie revolves around Will Smith) and if they don't completely foul up and get a bomb Columbia can count on drunk teens, DVD sales and the massive romcom market to get a worthy profit. The acting is disinterested, once again this is a film with only one A-lister and as such the whole movie is oriented around him, with two very obvious secondary stereotypes, the love interest-Eva Mendes and the goofy overweight sidekick-Kevin James. James' acting is at least noteworthy seeing as he is the ready butt of nearly all the movie's jokes. Sound is just as you'd expect, light and fruity, this kind of movie is after all the "lounge music" of cinema. The writing as mentioned before is dogmatic with some occasional flair (don't count on too much to keep you going after the first couple of high-profile jokes though). To sum Hitch up I'd have to say, if you're looking for involvement look in the "serious movies" section. If you like Will Smith he's done better than this. If you want something really funny look elsewhere, if you're looking for a romantic movie this doesn't fit the bill, if, however you find yourself absolutely positively stuck in the house without anything to do and this is the only recent movie on TV it will provide you with adequate entertainment. Personally I felt just a little bit sick after watching this (but maybe that was the long bus ride)!