Contrived, boring and entirely forgettable.

Rating: 3/10 (31 December 2016)

As most people, I saw this film when it came out. Normally, I remember films very well, but except for the well known restaurant scene ("I'll have what she is having!"), I couldn't remember any of it. So I decided to watch it again. The film starts of relatively well - not your typical romcom style, and that's a good thing. But that's also where the list of good things about this film ends. What starts with him being cold and distant and her being "structured" as she puts it, ends with both of them being pretty much the same. (Occasional emotional outbursts do not a character arc make) I could not focus on the film and whatever story there was in it, because dialogues were mostly forced and unnecessarily long. I even stopped the film a few times just to see how it would play with a few sentences taken out here and there, and it played much better. Maybe this is poor writing, maybe poor editing, but in any case, it resulted in a film that is hard to watch and a story that reminds you that it is artificial, quite regularly. The illusion of a relationship between the main characters is the worst part: they are friends, and that only in the second half of the film. I never believed that they were for real; I was also annoyed with both of them too many times to care if they loved each other or died in a freak accident. In the end, the most important question about this film is - how did it get such a fanatical following? I remember that when it first came out, it was pushed and promoted all over the place. The "I will have the same" scene in the restaurant was daring for those times, and it certainly helped, but even that scene plays quite badly: structured characters do not just jump out of their structured world to entertain audiences - more was needed but it was never there. Maybe it was all that advertising and PR, or perhaps everyone wanted to see a (faked) orgasm on the big screen... In any case, the film was never that good to start with, and it really aged badly. If the editing and dialogues were a bit better focused, and if character development was a bit more realistic and deeper, I would consider this for an upgrade. As it is, it gets very generous 3 stars from me.