Last year, between the two of us, we watched an average of 317 movies.
This year our goal is to top that by watching at least one a day.
And as an extra special torture, we've decided to write about all of them.

24 January 2008

Sex and Death 101, dir. Daniel Waters (2007)

STEVE says:
Hit and Miss comedy - mostly Miss, though - from Daniel Waters, the guy who brought us Heathers, Batman Returns and Demolition Man. All the enjoyment I got from those movies was counterbalanced by the headache I got from this one.

Sex and Death 101 was about a guy who gets a mysterious email, a list of all the women he's ever slept with... and will ever sleep with. This last stuns him because he's about to get married and wonders why there are 79 women on the list after his fiancee. So, as the laws of film would have it, he breaks off his marriage and starts fucking his way through this list. Meanwhile, there's a serial... er, coma-inducer, I guess you'd say, going about town... inducing comas. These two stories dovetail and they both live happily ever after. Crap.

Nikki said, when the end credits rolled, "I'm sure there was a good movie in there somewhere," and that about summed it up. The movie was too long by about 20 minutes, there were scenes that could have been lifted out whole and never missed because they did nothing to move the story forward, and it was pretty poorly written in general. The midpoint was great - he falls in love with someone on the list. But it's convoluted because she wants to be just friends and won't have sex with him. Then she dies. Midpoint is meant to be a reversal of the action, but by reversing the reversal, you negate everything that came after it, thereby wasting 20 MINUTES OF MY TIME!.

I wanted to like this movie. I wish I could have. But it did have The Facts of Life's Mindy Cohn in a supporting role, so that counts for half a star. Go Natalie!

2/5

NIKKI says:

The devastation of the previous night had us yearning for a comedy. This one started out just the way we like them -- indie, low budget, few big names, interesting story. And then it just burned out. Simon Baker (...Denny! BAKER! Denny! BAKER!) plays a guy who receives an email listing every woman he has ever slept with and will ever sleep with and about 70 of those names appear after his fiance. Such a great premise. Instead of really digging deep, exploring adult relationships and varied meanings of sex for men and women and anything particularly smart and potentially surprising, writer/director Dan Waters chose to give us a smarmy, sleazy sex-comedy with very little hearts and fewer smarts.

I'm at a loss to explain Winona's involvement. Her character went nowhere and had so little do with the goings on that her final scenes meant nothing. Why did we care about her? Who was she? Does one conversation at the end of a two-hour film anywhere near adequate development? Not really. I would have believed Simon getting with Mindy Cohn (playing a lesbian) before Winona's faux serial killer.

So, a disappointment. Nothing at all to rave about. Though Simon Baker is good at funny.

2/5