Filipe Manuel Neto
5
|
Mar 13, 2024
**A somewhat one-dimensional comedy that is based on uncomfortable dialogues and situations.**
I didn't really know what I was going to find when I sat down to watch this film, directed and written by Kevin Smith (who also appears in the film, in a minor role, his famous “Silent Bob”), who we know best for his participation in the “Clerks” movies. When I finished, I felt moderately satisfied, even though I consider the film forgettable.
The plot is based on an unlikely romance between two very different people: Holden is a comic book artist who lives and works with his best friend, Banky. Being a conservative and conventional man, he is confused when he falls in love with Alyssa, a liberal and sexually experienced woman, who says she is a lesbian, but who does not give up having sex with men when she feels like it. The romance will cause mutual discomfort and will lead Banky to try to “protect” Holden from that woman, who is so different from them.
Creating a romantic comedy in which a conventional and conservative man gets involved with a clearly more liberal and experienced woman is a good idea, but the film stops there and doesn't go much further than the tension created around it. The characters are poorly developed and are limited to “symbolizing” incompatible ways of experiencing sexuality. We never know more about them and their motivations or thoughts, and the film is not very effective in the way it tries to create comical situations around this. Thinking about the subject, I believe that the funniest dialogues are those of Banky, who shows from an early age that his character is spontaneous and prone to saying things that shouldn't be said.
With a poorly developed script, situations whose joke never exceeds the average and production values that also do not surprise or exceed the “standard”, the strongest point of this film ends up being, in my opinion, the work of the main cast, in particular Ben Affleck, Jason Lee and Joey Lauren Adams. Affleck, especially, is superb in the way he brings his character to life. One could hardly give more strength and credibility to that character. Lee is equally good, in that he can be funny, even if he is one-dimensional. Joey Adams does a very good job, and it's strange to see how this film didn't contribute much to the growth of his career.
