TITLE & REVIEW
Arthur is an inventor who discovers the elixier of youth.
Well, it is not ETERNAL youth - it only lasts about six hours.
Also, it does not protect the user from accidents
or from fatal acts of nature.
Arthur's widow Joan ( Patricia Hodge ) inherits his illegible formula, plus a few bottles of whisky that include the elixier. She and her friends, Linda ( Diane Keaton and Susan ( Lulu ), use the elixier for frolics ... and revenge of their ex-lovers.
The girls take a trip to Las Vegas, where they befriend Hal (David Harewood - Supergirl ).
There is also a LBGT sub-text to the film. Boy George ( ) makes a guest-appearance at the Las Vegas drag night, and one of the girls pines for Karen ( Hayley Mills ) - her lesbian loved from before her heteronormative marriage. Bill Patterson ( ) has a cameo as a helpful and supportive ex-husband.
Bernard (Paapa Essiedu -
Lazarus Project
) works for corrupt auction house owner Mr Flaxman (Alan Cummings -
Marlowe
). The bad news is that he chooses career over love,
so his wife leaves him and takes their daughter.
The good news is he awakens a genie, Flora (
Melissa McCarthy
), who offers him lots of wishes.
This starts as a fish-out-of-water comedy, with Bernard teaching Flora about life in the USA circa 2023. He uses his wishes sparingly, although his decision to hang the Mona Lisa on his wall backfires horribly. A police detective (Luis Guzman - ) gets involved.
Dr Pincus (Ricky Gervase -
Invention of Lying (2009)
) is an introverted English dentist who lives in New York City.
He goes in for a routine medical operation, with surgeon
Kristen Wiig
. Something goes wrong, and he ends up as a
Ghost Whisperer
like the little boy in
The Sixth Sense (1999)
. He is then constantly stalked by ghosts like Alan Ruck (
Star Trek: Generations
) and
Danai Gurira
.
One of the ghosts, an adulterous snob named Frank (Greg Kinear - Mystery Men (1999) ), persuades Pincus to help him. The job is to separate Frank's widow, Gwen ( Tea Leoni ), from her new boyfriend - a Human rights Lawyer (Billy Campbell - The 4400 ).
Pincus finds himself falling in love with Gwen. But this is not a normal rom-com, and Pincus is not the regular kind of romantic hero.
Charlie (Dane Cook -
American Gods
) is a lucky man.
He gets to have sex with lots of women,
but never settles down.
Finally he meets the girl of his dreams -
Jessica Alba
. However, there is a minor problem.
It turns out that the protagonist was the victim of a magical curse. This is the kind of thing that happens in Freaky Friday movies, so it is a well-worn trope but it has not been used in a rom-com for grown-ups since Simpy Irresistable .
The humour mostly comes from the hero's sidekick (Dan Folger - Balls of Fire ).
This is the story about a middle-class white woman (
Heather Graham
) who is in an unsatisfying relationship with an unpleasant man.
She goes to a female empowerment seminar,
and meets a couple of other middle-class white women.
Well, one is a light-skinned Latina (
Stephanie Beatriz
). Anyway, they light candles as a faux-Wiccan ritual and make a pact
to support and encourage each other in establishing positive sexual relationships.
Yes, like the teenage boys did in American Pie.
Their plan is to only date good guys (AKA nice guys, AKA incels)
because they think they deserve it (i.e. they have a sense of entitlement).
The protagonist's boyfriend is a top Hollywood writer-director. He is also an over-the-top misogynist prick who holds back her career. The studio boss is a woman ( Rhea Perlman ), and the co-executive is also female. However, the protagonist still claims it is a male-dominated industry.
The protagonist is held back by a puritanical religious upbringing. Her Catholic Priest (Johnny Knoxville - Men in Black 2 ) preached that sex should only be to make babies, never for pleasure. This mirrors Graham's personal life, so we can assume the movie is partly auto-biographical. She wrote and directed this, and it is about her character's journey to become a writer-director. The moral is that the straw-man villain is a bad creator because he is a bad person, but she (as a female, therefore flawless) is a suitable person to be an auteur.
The protagonist objects to the nature of the slasher movie genre, which since Halloween (1977) has mimicked the medieval morality plays. Somehow it appears that this movie is making it out that villains and monsters in horror movies are actually meant to be heroes and role models. This is a common trope in contemporary feminist thought. Her plan is to subvert the morality message. Surely this was already done by Scream (1996) , when the Final Girl lost her cherry to her boyfriend.
The straw-man ex-boyfriend decides to make a spin-off video game where the player is incentivised to kill as many slut NPCs as possible. Obviously this is a contrived reference to video games like Grand Theft Auto. Anyway, the protagonist's response is to censor freedom of speech in a criminal manner. She hacks the computer and sabotages her boss's project, which results in a couple of her innocent cow-orkers losing their jobs. Naturally, the saboteur is never held responsible for making these people suffer.
Beatriz, who is almost unrecognisably beautiful when she smiles, is sleeping with a man who wants to be in an open relationship. Yes, he is stupid enough to want an open relationship even though she has a lot more to gain from such an arrangement. Of course, if she crushes her man's soul and compels him to monogamy will she still want to be with him?
The protagonist has mind-blowing sex with a hippie (Luke Arnold - Black Sails ). However, this is a classic rebound relationship. She also works with a nerdy male feminist type who constantly validates her feelings all the time. It seems like she is meant to end up with the nerd, but there is something totally unnerving about him. He is the stereotypical nice guy that a hot girl is meant to end up with in a 1980s rom-com, but that seems a bit dated and anti-Feminist for today's audience.
This is basically an egotistical piece of self-indulgence that would never have been made if the writer/director was not an established star. The female characters are portrayed as reasonable, while the males are either himbos or monsters.
This is Ricky Gervase (
Invention of Lying (2009)
) delivering an amazing film.
It is set in a parallel universe, where nobody ever says anything that is not entirely true.
They speak their minds with such blatant lack of care about what anyone thinks that ...
well, it is hilarious how the truth can be so cruel and yet so funny at the same time.
The protagonist is a writer for a film company. They do not use actors, costumes or created dialogue. They just film a narrator reading from the script, listing the proven historical facts.
Then, one day, Ricky invents the lie. He manages to say something that he wishes were true - and because nobody can even consider the possibility that he might not tell the truth, they all accept it outright.
This leads on to a wonderful parody of organised religion. Yes, when he invents the lie he also has to invent religion. This is hilarious in itself.
Jennifer Garner had Ricky as a guest-star on her show Alias , and now he returns the favour by using her as his love interest.
Elizabeth (
Reese Witherspoon
), a workaholic Doctor who lives in San Francisco,
is involved in a road traffic accident.
David (Mark Ruffalo -
Avengers Assemble
), a depressed architect, rents her apartment.
Elizabeth is still there - as a disembodied spirit.
Unfortunately, she does not remember what happened to her
and tries everything she can think of to get rid of him.
David asks his best buddy Jack (Donal Logue - Vikings ) for help. Then he calls in a hippie exorcist Darryl (Jon Heder - ). For some reason, David also tries to avoid his flirty neighbour Katrina ( Ivana Milicevic ).
The romance progresses, and the couple actually have a chance at a happy ending of sorts. That is, if David wins a climactic race against time.
The opening scene sets the tone for the movie.
A schoolteacher asks her class what their parents do for a living.
One small boy calls his father a professional liar.
It turns out that the father is actually a lawyer ...
which the boy refuses to accept is any different than what he said.
The boy's father (Jim Carey - Number 23 ), constantly lets him down by failing to arrive on time. The fact this is not actually the father's fault, since he is being sexually harrassed by his boss ( Amanda Donahoe ), is not taken into account. Instead the boy makes a magical wish that his dad will be unable to tell a lie for the next 24 hours. The boy is basically afflicting his own father with a magical curse for not getting his own work-life balance right. Of course, compelling the lawyer to tell the truth for an entire day means the man cannot do his job or get justice for his clients.
The client ( Jennifer Tilly ) is portrayed as a vicious gold-digger. Since Jim cannot lie, he can only win the case on what he calls a technicality. Yes - the fact that the client was a victim, since she was legally underage when the ex-husband coerced her into the pre-nup, is actually treated as a technicality!
The protagonist is Rachel, a young Jewish woman who lives in New York City.
She is a sculptor and art tutor,
which means that she is a disappointment to her mother (
Teryl Rothery
). Luckily she can confide in her neighbour Doris (
Illeana Douglas
). Rachel reveals that she made her perfect man,
a life-size sculpture that she imbued with the appropriate characteristics -
loyalty and what-not, like if he was a dog.
Doris presents her talisman, themed on the legend of the Gollem of Prague.
Next morning, Clay the Gollem has magically come to life. He is physically flawless, so he easily gets a job as a male model. However, he becomes obsessed with food so his ambition is to become a professional chef. All this should make him the perfect house-husband, but their relationship has no passion. Instead of letting Clay sleep with her, she makes him rent the spare bedroom of her buddy David.
David is a guy that Rachel has friend-zoned. They have a lot in common, although his art form is stand-up comedy instead of sculpture. Irish Americans are expected to become cops or fire-fighters, while Asians are meant to become accountants and Jewish people are pushed towards law and medicine. After all, David's relationship with his parents is quite similar to Rachel's.
David applies for a role in an exclusive comedy festival. His new girlfriend is less than impressed when she discovers that it only pays in exposure.
The result is a predictable made-in-Canada piece for the Hallmark channel.
This starts in ancient Egypt, 2541BCE where Emma (
Kim Catrall
) has turned down marriage proposals from all eligible men.
Instead she wants to be a twentieth century woman,
with the power to change the world.
Basically she wants to be a man.
But instead of changing her genders,
the gods curse her to travel through time.
She is reborn repeatedly in the credits cartoon sequence
as a graven image, such as the figurehead of an explorer's ship.
The story moves to the 1980s, when Jonathan Switcher (Andrew McCarthy - ) is a wannabe sculptor who has trouble keeping a job. He wants to turn everything into art - hedges, balloons, pizzas. Unfortunately the Philadelphia economy focused on quantity, not quality, and none of his employers saw value in beauty. Even his girlfriend Roxy is a Yuppie career-woman of the type that Emma wanted to become.
Jonathan gets hired by an old lady, Claire ( Estelle Getty ), who owns the department store he hangs around outside. He once made a shop-window dummy that looks like Kim Catrall, and now he is obsessed with it. Now he gets himself assigned to help in the window display that the dummy is in.
The dummy comes to life as Emmy, but only when Jonathan is around. They carry on a passionate affair every night, with Emmy as Jonathan's muse. She inspired him to create the body she now inhabits, and she inspires him to create spectacular window displays. They have to do this while avoiding Captain Felix Maxwell (GW Bailey - Police Academy ), the night security guard. A series of comedy montages leads to Jonathan being promoted from stock-boy to designer to Vice President of the company, as he seemingly single-handedly takes 89% of the rival's business.
Claire's ungrateful minion Mr Richards (James Spader - ) is plotting to undermine her, and drive the store out of business. He is conspiring with the rival retailer, which also employs Jonathan's estranged girlfriend Roxy. She is assigned to discover his secret.
English Aristocrat Franklin Wilhern (Richard E. Grant -
How to get Ahead in Advertising
) and his wife Jessica (
Catherine O'Hara
) have a daughter.
Unfortunately the family has been cursed by a witch in the 1800s,
and the daughter has the face of a pig.
The baby grows up to be Penelope ( Christina Ricci ), who looks like the hot chick from Black Snake Moan but with much bigger nostrils. Well, this was made for an audience of children so they could not make her look as ugly as The Phantom of the Opera . The result is a child-friendly gender-flipped version.
Penelope's nose cannot be operated on by a plastic surgeon, because the curse means that her carotid artery somehow runs through it. The only way to end the curse is for her to marry a man of her own socio-economic status. The parents hire their daughter a dating specialist, professional matchmaker Wanda ( Ronni Ancona ), who lines up a bunch of potential suitors. Unfortunately the family is being stalked by tabloid journalist Lemon (Peter Dinklage - Game of Thrones ). He hires a gambler (James McAvoy - X-Men: First Class ) to go undercover as a potential suitor. Of course, this is a comedy of errors as much as anything so nobody knows what is really going on.
The romance eventually falls apart, and the gambler runs off to work for his old boss Sam the Jazz Club owner (Russell Brand - ). Penelope runs away from home, so her parents get Detective Krull (Lenny Henry - LOTR: ) to look for her. She hides out with her new friend Annie ( Reese Witherspoon ) ...
Not only did Witherspoon take a supporting role, she also produced the movie. The result is impressive, with a cast of familiar faces in supporting roles such as Larry (Burn Gorman - Torchwood ), Max (Nick Frost - Hot Fuzz ) and Mr Vanderman (Nigel Havers - ). The story itself deepens, and allows all main characters to have their own story arc.
Bruce (Jim Carey -
The Number 23
) is a TV news reporter.
He has a great middle-class life with girlfriend Grace (
Jennifer Aniston
), living the American Dream in upstate New York.
Our protagonist blasphemes, and Magical Realism takes over. God (Morgan Freeman - Shawshank Redemption (1997) ) confronts him, and gifts him with the superpower of omnipotence. Will absolute power corrupt absolutely?
Bruce causes a few slapstick moments of the kind that Jim Carey is best known for. Of course, this happens when he uses his superpower for personal gain. For example, he uses it to humiliate his office rival, Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell - Get Smart ), and even catches the attention of super-desirable anchor-woman Susan Ortega ( Catherine Bell ).
Bruce does not realise that being a god is a full-time job. He concentrates on his day-job at the TV station, and even wants to get a promotion. Meanwhile his relationship with Grace hits the rocks.
The ending is quite profound for a Carey movie, even more than The Truman Show .
Evan Baxter (Steve Carrell -
Get Smart
) took Bruce's dream job in the original movie.
Now he gives up his seat beside anchor-woman Susan Ortega (
Catherine Bell
), and gets elected as a US Congressman in Washington DC.
He even has an office with friendly staff members Rita (
Wanda Sykes
) and Eugene (Jonah Hill -
).
God (Morgan Freeman - Shawshank Redemption (1997) ) chooses Evan as his prophet. This is not really a good thing - it turns into the trials of Job. Eventually Evan buckles down, accepts his role as the new Noah, and starts to build an enormous wooden boat. Evan's wife ( Lauren Graham ) is less than happy about his new hobby.
Evan's superior, Congressman Long (John Goodman - 10 Cloverfield Drive ), wants to pass a new law. He claims it is harmless, and merely intended to give the public greater access to public land. The reality is that he wants to steal from the public, privatising their land so that his greedy cronies can build on it. In other words, the villains are a conspiracy between corrupt politicians and greedy developers.
This all boils to a climax when Officer Collins (Dean Norris - Under The Dome ) arrives to enforce a court order because the ark is in breach of planning permission rules.
Like most of the films
Jodie Foster
appeared in during the 1970s, this hinges on her ability to act more mature than she really is.
Annabel (Foster) is 13 years old, but swops characters with her mother (
Barbara Harris
). And hilarity ensues.
This is a typical 1970s family comedy from Disney. The climax has tons of slapstick, with the work done by the actresses' stunt doubles.
This is a Disney remake of the
Jodie Foster
remake from 1976. It is basically a generation-gap comedy, starring
Lindsay Lohan
and
Jamie Lee Curtis
as mother and daughter. They are body-swopped by a magic fortune cookie,
so JLC acts immature (easy to do) and Lohan acts mature. The
Buffy S3 ep Band Candy
did this much better. But then,
one cannot really look for inspiration or originality in a remake of a mediocre film.
A thirteen year old boy makes a wish at a magical machine,
and gets transformed into Tom Hanks (
Splash
). With some help from his best friend he goes to the big city
and gets a job in a toy store run by Robert Loggia (
Lost Highway
). He falls foul of business rival John Heard (
Cat People
), and gets a girlfriend (
Elizabeth Perkins
). Ah, the 1980s were a simpler age
- today the female lead would be accused of Statutory rape!
This came out around the same time as Vice Versa , the Judge Reinhold flick with a similar concept. Hanks worked hard to change his screen persona, choosing supporting roles in dramatic films like A League of Their Own, while Reinhold kept going for comedic roles.
This is one of a late-1980s slew of
Freaky Friday
pastiches.
Business executive Judge Reinhold (Beverly Hills Cop)
swops minds with his schoolboy son Fred Savage (Wonder Years)
thanks to a magic skull.
In a lightweight thriller subplot, Swoosie Kurtz is hunting for the magic skull. If she steals it, the protagonists will be unable to change back.
There are a few familiar faces. The boy's mother is a young-looking Lois from Malcolm in the Middle, and his teacher is a young Jane Lynch .
In 1987 a thirteen-year-old girl named Jenna hates her life as a High School dork,
taken advantage of by Mean Girls like
Brie Larson
. She eventually realises she will never be able to conform
to their stereotype of coolness,
so she makes a wish to be a grown-up.
She wakes up in the year 2004 aged thirty, looking like
Jennifer Garner
.
Strangely the Garner version of the character acts much more childishly than the teenage one did. Presumably the director was intimidated by Garner's star power, since this movie was made in her brief period as a hot property in Hollywood, so he did not rein in her performance.
The movie has a more serious side. Grown-up Jenna has become shallow and selfish. Her childhood friend Matt (Mark Ruffalo - Avengers Assemble ) has drifted away from her, and is engaged to marry Wendy ( Lynn Collins ). Worse, her Mean Girl cow-orker ( Judy Greer ) is planning to stab her in the back.
Jenna's boss is Andy Sirkis ( Lord of the Rings ), in a role that a couple of years later would have been played by Ricky Gervase ( Invention of Lying (2009) ).
Chandler from Friends is middle-aged, getting divorced by his still-hot wife.
He is magically transformed into teen heart-throb Zac Efron,
who looks like a young Ian Somerhalder (
Smallville, Lost, Vampire Diaries
). He uses this as an opportunity to interfere in the love life of his hot teen daughter (
Michelle Trachtenberg
).
The hero's nerdy sidekick prevents genre blindness by identifying the hero's journey as a magical spirit quest. Luckily the school's headmistress ( Melora Hardin ) is a big fan of Lord of the Rings .
The teenage schoolgirls include Jamie ( Kat Graham ) and Samantha ( Tiya Sircar ), who both went on to bigger and better things.
Jordan Sanders (
Regina Hall
) is a successful but bossy businesswoman who hates children.
Like the title character in
Scrooged
, she is about to get her karmic come-uppance.
With great irony, she is magically turned into a child herself.
The young Jordan ( Marsai Martin ) is forced to attend school. The good news is that she likes the teacher (Justin Hartley - Smallville ), The bad news is that, despite her attempts to be one of the cool kids, she ends up with the outcasts in a safe-space called the Friend-Zone.
As always in this kind of thing, the victim of the curse must become a better person in order to have it removed.
This is a remake of the Mel Gibson movie
What Women Want (2000)
, which was hardly a blockbuster hit.
So why do a remake right now, twenty years later,
with a black woman in the lead role?
Well, the studio probably felt some pressure
after the #OscarsSoWhite hashtag went mainstream.
Also, this came out around the same time as the rival movie
Little (2019)
, a similar remake with a black female lead.
Ali Davis ( Tarajia P Henson ) is a sports agent - a professional middle-man (oops, middle-person) between athletes and their commercial sponsors. As the only black woman in an all-male firm - which is majority white even though it is set in Atlanta, Georgia - she seems to have the odds stacked against her. Then, one night she and her gal-pals have a party with a voodoo priestess. The morning after, she has been cursed with the ability to read mens' surface thoughts. Later she starts to treat it as a superpower.
The company's next big fish is a young athlete. Ali and her team-mates compete against each other to win favour with Joe 'Dolla' Barry (Tracy Morgan - 30 Rock ), the athlete's manager and over-protective father.
Ali also tries to sort out her private life. Her problem with Will the barman (Aldis Hodge - Die Hard 3 ) is that she is obsessed with being in control all the time. However, when she hooks up with Captain Fucktastic (Kellan Lutz - Hercules ) she is turned off by the fact that he is a sexual submissive.
This is a comedy, so things tend to go terribly wrong for the protagonist. That said, she manages to use her other superpower to prevent herself being fired when she screws up - her privileged status as a Woman of Colour.
Sterling K. Brown (
The Predator
) and his buddy Mark Duplass (
) are trapped in a
Biodome
, kept alive by a miniature ecosystem that relies on a set of fish
named after the characters from the TV show Cheers.
When Diane, the last female fish, dies it looks like the men are doomed.
Then, in a twist reminiscent of
Jurassic Park
, life finds a way.
One of the male fish, Woody, starts to transition into becoming female.
One of the men starts to gender transition too. Well, they are the last of the species so they will have to Adam-and-Steve it to repopulate the world. Which one transitions? Well, as we saw in Watchmen a Black man can be shown penetrating a white man ... but never the other way around.
Jessica (
Rachel McAdams
) is a US High School's Mean Girl.
She shoplifts a magical artefact,
and its supernatural powers body-swap her with a career criminal (Rob Schneider -
Judge Dredd (1995)
).
Our heroine, now trapped in a man's body, calls on her best buddy ( Anna Farris ) to help her.
The store-owner, a dreadlocked Tweener (Adam Sandler - Little Nicky ), is around to deliver exposition.
This is an anime cartoon about a teenage boy and girl who swap bodies.
They quickly work out what is happening, and start to leave messages for each other.
Much like
The Lake House
, there is a good reason the two characters never met.
At the start, they have to get used to corresponding and co-existing. Then the boy, in the future, wants to meet the girl.
It turns out that meeting may be more difficult than they thought.
This starts with a young woman telling her friend (
Kathryn Winnick
) about a holiday fling she had.
It turns out that many other women,
including a female firefighter (
Kristen Bauer
), have hooked up with the same man.
We cut to Linda (
Lynn Collins
), the most recent lucky lady.
Her lover, Henry Roth (Adam Sandler -
Little Nicky
), talks his way out of a long-time commitment with her.
Despite his admittedly egg-shaped head,
women find him strangely irresistable
and as such he has no need to settle down.
In all fairness,
his success is due to his willingness to put the work in.
One day Henry meets Lucy ( Drew Barrymore ), who seems to be his perfect woman. However, he cannot settle down with her because she has brain damage and cannot form long-term memories - like in Memento . Her father and her brother Doug (Sean Astin - The Goonies ) play an elaborate charade every day to convince her it is 13th October 2003, the day she got brain damage.
The obvious comparison with this film is Groundhog Day . Not only does everyone have to help Lucy relive the same day, but instead of Murray and Ramis this movie has Dan Akroyd ( Ghostbusters ) in a cameo as Lucy's doctor. The other contrast is with Lucy's favourite film, The Sixth Sense , as Lucy must follow the same trajectory as the Bruce Willis character: destroyed by a horrible incident and unable to move on without intervention.
The narrator (Domhnall Gleeson -
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
) discovers that he can time travel.
He gets some exposition from his father (Bill Nighy -
Shaun of the Dead
), and learns the limits of his powers.
He can only travel to points in his own lifetime, like in
Being Erica
.
Since using his superpower to actually change the world for the better seems out of the question, the protagonist settles for living his own personal soap opera. His first love is Charlotte ( Margot Robbie ), but he eventually falls for Mary ( Rachel McAdams ). Much like in Groundhog Day , he gets many attempts at the perfect first date.
McAdams played the title role in The Time-Traveller's Wife , a story about a couple in a very similar situation. That film was a big-budget Hollywood effort, while this is a twee little piece of English cinema.
So what is wrong with this film? Well, it starts as a drama and turns into a basic rom-com. It was marketed on the fact that the director was also responsible for Love Actually . Yes, this was written and directed by Richard Curtis. He has constructed a story that features time travel, but deliberately minimises the use of it.
Lauren (
Catherine Haena Kim
) is a high-flying marketing executive.
She has friend-zoned an awesome guy,
who the audience can clearly see is her perfect man.
Luckily he has no intention of looking elsewhere,
so there is plenty of time for her to realise her mistake and make her move.
Since Lauren is too busy with her career, since she has been given an unrealistic deadline for the ultimate pitch, the storyline gives her some help seeing her mistake. Every night, she is awakened by the ghost of one of her former boyfriends. Well, not ghosts since they are not actually dead. More like she dreams about seeing them again.
The result is a predictable made-in-Canada piece for the Hallmark channel.
TV Weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray -
City of Ember
) and his new Producer (
Andy McDowell
) are sent to a small town in the mountains to film a traditional ceremony.
While there he meets a bunch of small-town folks,
like his former school-mate Ned Rierson (Stephen Tobolowsky -
Heroes (Season 2)
).
Phil finds himself in a time loop. In fact, the concept has become synonymous with this film. However, the idea was previously used - for example, in at least one episode of Star Trek: TNG .
Phil is a big-city man who does not like small-town life. Despite this, he tries to adapt to his new situation. Among other things, he tries to seduce the new Producer. However, despite this rom-com storyline featuring heavily in the original advertising it is really just a minor subplot.
This is really a drama about a man who is driven slowly insane. The original script started on day five thousand of the time loop, which means Phil would have been re-living the day for fifteen years. The final version has a lot more comedy in it, and a small touch of romance, but it is still a depressing drama at its heart.
Rafe Spall (
The Ritual
), an Englishman living in Sydney Australia, gets married to his fiance.
The very next day, he discovers that time is moving at an accelerated rate for him.
He jumps forward a year at a time,
so he goes from one wedding anniversary to the next.
This means he skips the boring bits of his marriage falling apart,
and just has brief opportunities to put it together again.
This movie has a bit of a twist on the old Magical Minority twist. The love interests and best friend, all major supporting roles, are Persons Of Colour. The more minor expositionary role, usually reserved for the token POC, is taken by a white person ... who is a gay woman.
A young woman named Caroline (
Katrina Begin
) is about to get divorced.
A young woman named Maggie (
Katie Findlay
) is a top-notch lawyer in Chicago, USA.
She and her husband take a trip back to their home town.
The bad news is that her husband thinks their marriage has failed.
The good news is that when she visits the local wishing well,
she hits her head and wakes up fifteen years earlier.
This is the Hallmark version of Back to the Future , shot on a Canadian TV budget. Instead of sending the protagonist back a few decades, she ends up in a world where the only observable difference is that she has to use an off-line flip-phone instead of an on-line smart-phone.
Maggie starts as 37-year-old, played by a 31-year-old actress who looks more like a teenager. Well, at least she is convincing as a 22-year-old. Her superpower is as a lawyer, so she uses it to save the town library from a crooked property developer. This puts her in the crossfire between her two love interests. Her husband-to-be wants to save the library, while her College boyfriend's millionaire father is a supporter of the developer.
Sarah (
Torrey deVitto
) is a single mother who lives on her father's farm
where the family run's an organic food business.
One day her young son finds a strange man, Rip (Niall Hood -
Eureka
), foraging for food in their barn.
They turn him over to the police so he can get a hospital checkup,
but he returns to the farm and they hire him as a farm-worker.
Rip has amnesia because of a concussion, so the people assume he is a military veteran who has become homeless. They give him a shave and a haircut, which removes his fake-looking beard and hair. His memory comes back, but the war he fought in was the American Revolution. It turns out his real name is Rip Van Winkle the Second, son of the man that the story-book character was based on. He claims his time-travel happened because he was in a cave lined with a specific mineral, and it was activated by the electrical activity of a thunderstorm.
Although this was made in Canada, on a television budget, Rip is portrayed as an American revolutionary. This is presumably to cash in on the success of Sleepy Hollow , a US TV show with a similar premise. That show emphasises America's racist past, while this movie ignores social changes beyond the fact that modern-day women wear pantaloons.
Sarah interacts with the Sheriff's deputy, who is the only eligible man in town. This makes him Rip's rival, along with the local town Historian. They would be better off without him, so they try to get him to go back to where he came from. Now Sarah must decide if she wants to keep Rip for herself. Well, it is a romance aimed at a female audience so the female protagonist must be empowered.
This starts in 1688, when Agnes (
Alice Lowe
) fell in love with a Covenanter (Aneurin Barnard -
Dr Who
). The good news is that the next year,
William of Orange created the Glorious Revolution
and liberated the English-speaking world
from the Jacobite tyranny.
The bad news is that Agnes was killed in a horrific accident.
Agnes gets reincarnated in the 1700s, and despite having no memory of her previous lives she becomes obsessed with the Covenanter's reincarnation. This carries on until 1981, New York City, when Agnes discovered she was being reincarnated. Scipio (Jacob Anderson - Interview With the Vampire ) is also reincarnated, so he can help her out. Of course, he has his own agenda.
Because this is a dark comedy, writer-director Alice Lowe plays fast and loose with the rules. She deconstructs the obsessive nature of rom-com movies, making the obsession entirely one-sided. In fact, she takes it a step further by giving Agnes a stalker of her own - her dog is reincarnated as Nick Frost ( Shaun of the Dead ) who wants to marry her.
Lowe makes some artistically challenging decisions. As a woman, she is free to joke about female obsessions (and the female perspective on male obsessions) in a way that male creators would not do. However, the film's ending lacks catharsis - which might win it awards, but not big box-office takings.
Katherine (
Nicky Whelan
), a high-flying advertising executive,
has an unsuccessful first date on Valentine's day.
She meets her fairy godmother, Marta (
Marina Sirtis
), who traps her in a time loop
so that she keeps reliving that day until she finds her soulmate.
Kat's problem is that her standards are too high, so she has to lower her unrealistic expectations and date a few service-sector men. This also gives her infinite do-overs at her job, so when she flubs her big presentation to a client - the old Hollywood trope, like in Short Circuit 2 - she gets to hone her perfomance and try again. However, the important thing is that she questions her work/life balance. She always concentrated on her career, but now she realises how empty her life is. Even with a cute fluffy dog as her domestic companion, she is still lonely. Will she end up like her boss Janice ( Paris Jefferson )?
Andy Samberg (
