Not bad, but not really worth it.

Rating: 4/10 (22 February 2003)

For the most part this movie was fairly funny and entertaining. The two leads do a credible job of playing their roles, and some of the things she does to drive him away are quite amusing.
However, a lot of this movie just doesn't make sense. And not in a slight non-sequitur that movies often have swept under the rug. No, I'm talking big-time here. This supposedly smart, worldly columnist for a Cosmo-clone tries to drive this guy away by being wildly psychotic and bizarre, not what would actually make sense: unattractive and needy. And then when psycho and bizarre doesn't work, she ends up going to meet his folks on Staten island. And suddenly the script writers seem to give up on trying to decide what she should be thinking and she just goes as herself, with no anxieties or anything. Nor does he seem to notice this difference.

Actually the whole Staten island sequence was excellent: funny, real, sweet, sincere... it just totally didn't fit the rest of the movie. It's as if the writers came up with that really great scene and then tried to find a totally bland hollywood movie to stick it in, where it vaguely makes sense.

It's hard not to let this bother you. It reminds me of bad sitcoms where things are too zany for anyone to just continue on trying to be normal, and yet they do.