Product: Someone Like You [VHS] (2001)
Rating: 5.0
Dang, but that Ashley's cute!
I can't help it. Even though this is basically a chick-flick, I loved it.I guess someone like Sandra Bullock or maybe Jennifer Anniston could have pulled off Ashley's role as Jane Goodall (no relation to the gorilla woman) - after all, chick-flick-chicks are pretty interchangable. But there's something about Ashley Judd that makes you sit up and think, gosh, this girl (woman, I guess) is just a little different. I'm gonna pay just a little more attention to this one.Maybe it's the way her character interacts with the other actors. She's working with "professional supporting actors" Greg Kinnear and Marisa Tomei, not to mention the future Wolverine Hugh Jackman. None of their characters, as Jane's love interest, best friend, and roommate, respectively, have any reason to exist except to provide Ashley with opportunities to be adorable.The screenplay is genuinely witty. There's one scene in which Ashley finds her diaphragm, which she has apparently been keeping in storage, and blows dust off it. That single action tells you more about her character's life than twenty pages of dialog. Another hilarious bit has Greg Kinnear's character reciting an imaginary "deconstruction" of male manipulation techniques in terms of Jane/Ashley's "New Cow Theory."Ashley makes acting in a piece like this look easy, unlike Marisa Tomei, whose over-the-topness makes you a little conscious of the fact that she's "on" (don't get me wrong -- Marisa's cute, too, but she's no Ashley!).There's a scene in which Ashley has to run. We all know that Ashley can run like frickin' Prefontaine. Yet she's playing a "girlie" girl, so she hams it up just enough, with the skidding and arm-waving, so that she looks like a puppy who can barely make it to its dish without banging into the refrigerator.Okay, so I'm biased. But I liked this movie a lot.