Exposed Stitching

Rating: 2/10 (7 June 2008)

The only value in this project is that it is such an obvious lesson in how advanced the study of demographics really has become.
The two largest groups film-makers (at least studio-subservient film-makers) aim for are men, and women. It's a risky and delicate practice to try to appeal to both within the same film, and there are various approaches to doing so, and the most common is to find some common ground between the sexes and exploit it. For instance, Spielberg's wild success came from appealing to the child in each viewer, a common ground shared across gender lines.
This is different, in what seems a modern fashion, revealing its highly-engineered skeleton. Here there is no common ground. Instead these guys have attempted to merge two genres: the romantic drama (for the ladies,) and the stoner comedy (men enjoy a good laugh at themselves, you see.) To pull this off, a delicate interweaving of elements is required to tie the two genres together seamlessly, a requisite which fails here. Th result is jarring in that the two characters (from different genres) seem wholly incompatible. It's just too unrealistic.
I personally thought the chick-flick half was done more competently. Great comedy is born of pain, but when that pain is emphasized the comedy saddens. And this is sad comedy to begin with.
I also disliked "Superbad" but feel it's a notch better than this one, given the fact that it doesn't make this same mistake of taking itself seriously.