BEFORE: I don't really know anything about this film, except it's one of those that keeps popping up in the cable listings on a certain channel (I forget which one) and I must have just noticed it while I was putting my chain together, looking for more romance-based material. The more material I have, the easier it is to make a chain that's a month and a half long - as it is, there will still be a good twenty or so romance films that didn't connect that I won't be getting to this year, and then I'll spend the summer and fall looking for more material that might allow me to put another solid romance chain together next year, if it comes to that.
Taye Diggs carries over from "Set It Up", and now I have to decide if he will be in TWO more films in this chain, or just one. A decision like this could turn out to be important, it could mean the difference between hitting the right film on April 1, or April 20, or for big Movie #3,500, which will occur in early April. There's a lot to consider, that's all - fortunately there are several films that I can drop as needed (the middle film in a chain of 3 with the same actor) and that will help me make adjustments in late March or early April as needed.
THE PLOT: A group of NYC thirtysomethings having problems with fidelity gets an opportunity to turn back the clock.
AFTER: Taye Diggs was uncredited in this film, though he had a pretty important role, so thankfully there is the IMDB and Wikipedia now that alerts me to such things, so I will know all of the connections that can be made. A bigger question is why (and how) actors manage to appear in a big role in a film and keep their name out of the credits, it seems to go against all the usual reasons that people become actors, like fame and recognition. Who studies acting, gets an agent, makes connections, books the gig, does the work and cashes the check, and then tries to make sure nobody finds out about it? It doesn't make any sense. I can understand situations like Bruce Willis going uncredited for "Four Rooms", because he didn't want to get paid his usual salary, then ran afoul of SAG rules by working for free, so going uncredited seemed like a fair solution - but when that isn't the case, why would an actor want to go without credit for their appearance?
This film features a series of overlapping love triangles, similar to "She's Funny That Way", where another small group of New Yorkers was unbelievably interconnected to each other, and everybody was having at least one affair with somebody else in the group, even if nobody but the audience was aware all of the love connections. Somehow this manages to sell both genders out equally, all of the men and women seem to be in some form of committed relationship, then as both films progress, we learn that nearly everyone is really in TWO relationships, one open and one covert. I believe in serial monogamy, so it's a bit hard for me to swallow that EVERYONE in a group chooses to live their life this way.
Plus, this film was released in 2002 - at first this seems like the kind of film you might expect to come from the 1960's or 1970's, the time of the sexual revolution, free love, when many of the people in their thirties were anti-marriage, or possibly pro-open marriage, or just plain having affairs because they could. But then there was that wave of Neo-conservatism that came along in the 1980's, not just with Reagan & Republicans in power, but also AIDS was a concern, I know I certainly would have cut back on my sexual activity - if I had been sexually active (umm, with a partner) during the 80's, that is. I think I finally was, there at the tail end of the decade in 1989. It felt like a bit of a rush to get locked down into a monogamous relationship, just because it felt safer - so once I finally found a girlfriend, I stopped looking, that just made sense - then that marriage fell apart in 1996 and I went through the cycle again.
So, honestly, I don't remember much about the sexual politics of the early 2000's - maybe the pendulum had swung back toward the liberal side of things, because by then people were talking about things like gay marriage, and maybe that resulted in less sense of responsibility for the straights, it's a bit tough to recall. But I certainly don't remember a time when everyone, either single or married, could be counted on to be juggling two relationships at a time. To me, that's the aberration rather than the norm, so that's part of why it's so hard to believe in a group of six or seven adults where ALL of them are double-dipping.
Then again, there's what I think is the point of this little storytelling exercise, to show what sort of events are set in motion just because Dag fooled around with Rebecca, his best friend Peter's girlfriend, despite the fact that he was in a committed relationship with Halley. There's a cascade of failure that slowly develops once this fact is revealed to the group - Halley breaks up with Dag, Dag flirts with waitress Paula, Rebecca breaks up with Peter, Peter gets despondent on an airplane, meanwhile Halley sleeps over at Rebecca's apartment after moving out, and that's where she meets Rebecca's friend, Andre, and so on. All of these people are either married or in committed relationships, but that fact doesn't stop ANY of them from getting a little something on the side.
I just wonder what the writer and/or director's motivation is in presenting this little morality play - was this based on real-life incidents, and if so, who hurt them so badly? Was this film funded by the Christian Coalition, to show what bad things can happen from having an affair? To make the audience realize how many bad things can follow from a small lapse in judgement? But I think this might be too simple, because just because certain events come after one event, it doesn't necessarily mean that the initial event CAUSED all the bad things to happen. Sometimes we confuse sequence with causality, and they in fact be different.
Still, this film left me scratching my head, because after all the bad things happen, time is seen rewinding back to that first "bad" decision, and we then get a small taste of how the timeline would play out differently. There's no physical time machine, no magic spell, no mystical character with a stopwatch or a crystal ball, the rewinding just sort of...happens. So, OK, how? And also, why? And who's to say that the resulting events are "better" or "worse" than the ones we've already seen, just because they're different? I'd like to see the proper paperwork on this, please. And even then, things are "better" until they're not, and that ending shot REALLY confused me. Somebody, please explain!
NITPICK POINT: For a film from 2002, those cheesy video effects, like when you see a sort of (not animated, exactly, just altered) version of NYC through the windows of the cab - damn, I thought those type of effects stopped being used in the late 1980's. They're so "Friday Night Videos".... or like something out of bad public access cable, know what I mean? This was director Fisher Stevens' first film, and that really shows - at least he eventually turned to making meaningful documentaries.
Now I wish I could turn back the clock - if I'd known how pointless and confusing this film was, I would have skipped this one, and made room in my chain for a better film. But that's the ongoing problem, I never know for sure how good each film is going to be until I watch them.
Also starring Ron Eldard (last seen in "House of Sand and Fog"), Kyra Sedgwick (last seen in "The Edge of Seventeen"), Marisa Tomei (last seen in "Spider-Man: Far From Home"), Marley Shelton (last seen in "Rampage"), Sarita Choudhury (last seen in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2"), Patrick Breen (last seen in "A Most Violent Year"), Zoe Caldwell (last seen in "The Purple Rose of Cairo"), Peter Dinklage (last seen in "The Boss"), Bruno Amato (last seen in "Live by Night"), Idina Menzel (last heard in "Ralph Breaks the Internet"), Ron Rifkin (last seen in "A Star Is Born"), Donna Hanover (last seen in "Superstar").
RATING: 3 out of 10 sleeping pills
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