self indulgent Hollywood tripe

Rating: 1/10 (22 December 2006)

This is the worst film of the year. I shall have to watch Kevin Costner's The Postman again to suitably decide whether or not it is the worst film ever, but as a Hollywood custom made blockbuster, the title of worst film of the year shall sit uncomfortably enough with the charlatans who now run the big production houses. I don't even know where to start with this film. Basic cinematic errors in production, plot, acting, character continuity and general Vom factor are not hallmarks of a Hollywood propaganda machine that has sold us year on year with shallow but entertaining stories of love and affliction. Nowadays, if you want to write a fairytale, you have to make it animated. There was a time when black and white would do, but now viewers are too highly tuned to the stylistic forms of cinema for a fairytale to simply slip under the radar. Even if you come out with all guns blazing, an Oscar winner in Kate Winslett, a sex goddess in Cameron Diaz and a veritable prince charming in Jude Law, you're going to lose out if your story is basically a 12 year old girls fantasy with every twist more of an unravelling as the story ceases to portray life, even an idyllic one, and instead plunges further into farce and wishy-wash. To outline the story, two very different women, exemplified by some terrible stereotyping, decide to swap homes over the festive period in order to escape from the troubles that have engulfed their lives at home. Cameron Diaz plays a no-nonsense workaholic Los Angeles film advertising tsar while Kate Winslett's picturesque life culminates in a job as, wait for it, wedding correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and a quaint country cottage that looks like something out of Beatrix Potter's mind. I would like to go into the corniness of this but it is not possible, only because this sort of god awful sap is literally swathed over the entire film. Anyway, they do a sort of holiday swap and while away, Cameron Diaz falls for Kate Winslet's brother, played by Jude Law, and at the same time, over in LA, Kate Winslet falls for love fool Jack Black whilst helping an old screenwriter rediscover life. With just that it sounds like a charming little love tale but this film is so self indulgent that it cannot spare us any opportunity to make the story more ridiculous and more fantastical. If this film had been directed by Tim Burton it may have worked, but asking us to take this story straight up takes quite some cheek. Onto the Vom factor. A two minute monologue by Kate Winslett about what love is doesn't really get the eye juices flowing, instead you want to tell her to chill out and if she stopped doing things like that, maybe she wouldn't be having to give monologues on the meaning of love. Even Jack Black, a man I was counting on to salvage something out of this film chips in with maybe the cheesiest moment of the lot when he plays for Kate Winslet his musical (sappy music before you ask) interpretation of her. Who does that? Jack! Sort your life out mate! A poorly veiled sub-plot of the elderly screen-writer, so whimsically rescued from the brink by Kate Winslet, tells an astonishingly ironic tale of how Hollywood has become shallow and diluted and how he yearns for a return to classical film making. Is this some sort of a joke? If the woman who wrote this garbage doesn't see the irony in including a story like that in a film like this, then I think she needs to be sent back to the asylum before she hurts herself. Finally, the predictability, mixed in with some very odd plot-holes makes it a very linear 150 minutes viewing - that's right kids, 2 and a half hours for a chick-flick. After being introduced to all the characters in the first 15 minutes, anybody could have written this story, making the entire event a waste of bleeding time as you end up waiting for all the ridiculousness of it all to shut up and get to the bit you had anticipated about 5 scenes before the characters had. The plot holes didn't help, for example, Jude Law has two children who he is supposedly Dad of the Year for, but amazingly, he disappears getting drunk and staying out sleeping with Cameron Diaz for 2 days straight. Did no one else notice this when in production? I think I've made my point, nonetheless, I still want people to go see it, merely so people can see a clear example of the wrong way to make a blockbuster. If you enjoy it, you are almost certainly single and looking for that magical love that has thus far eluded youpathetic. Enjoy!