Head Over Heels

Year 14, Day 36 - 2/5/22 - Movie #4,037

BEFORE: This film looks like it will require at least two attempts to watch it - I had to get up early today and work at the movie theater (super-secret screening, sorry, can't even tell you what in-progress movie or which celebrity directed it and held a special event to get feedback from friends) so in order to get up early, that meant no Mountain Dew the night before.  This practically guaranteed I would fall asleep during the film, which I did - but hey, at least I got up in time to make it into Manhattan on a cold Saturday morning, and I did NOT oversleep and miss my shift. So, there's that.  Back home now in the afternoon, I'll make a second attempt to finish this film and clear it off the DVR.  

Freddie Prinze Jr. carries over from "She's All That". 

THE PLOT: A young woman is attracted to a man, despite thinking that she's seen him kill someone. 

AFTER: Man, this film is terrible - falling asleep last night right in the middle can be attributed to two factors - no caffeine to keep me awake, and the fact that the film is terrible, and the plot makes no sense.  It's full of random things, and feels like eight different movies that got stitched together, and none of them have anything to do with any of the others.  Kind of like those "New York, I Love You" and "Rio, I Love You" movies, with a bunch of short, unconnected plotlines, only in this case, all the short stories have the same actors in them, which is a weird way to go.

The first plotline concerns a woman who works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it's her job to restore Renaissance paintings, only the screenwriter didn't really take the time to learn how restoring a painting works - from what little I know about it, a restorer needs to carefully remove dirt or grime or smoke from a painting that was stored improperly, or fix a damaged section, but this usually doesn't involve the restorer changing the work in any way - here we see Amanda, the lead character, basically fixing a face in the painting by creating a new one herself, based on somebody she knows, and that's probably a big no-no.  Remember that woman in Spain a few years ago who decided to "fix" a damaged painting of Jesus and it ended up looking like a monkey?  She basically destroyed a valuable piece of art - so a restorer would never be allowed to take a classic work by Titian and paint her boyfriend's face into it, that's artistic heresy, why wasn't she fired on the spot for this?  Instead her boss says something like "Nice work, Amanda!" which is patently ridiculous. 

The second plotline concerns a woman (same woman, but again, it's a stretch to see how all these things fit together) who needs to find a new apartment because her roommate is a lesbian  - this seems more than a little homophobic, plus why do the roommates have to sleep in the same bed, and why can't Amanda tell her roommate that she just doesn't swing that way, and she'd like to sleep alone without being molested, essentially.  Is Amanda just too polite to say, "Hey, maybe don't grab my tits..." which all seems a bit odd.  Amanda moves to a new apartment with four models, who don't pay anything to live there, because the modeling agency pays for it, but still they feel justified in charging Amanda $500 a month to sleep in a closet, because they've turned all the bedrooms into walk-in closets, because they're models. While I approve of making fun of vapid, dumb models, still, that's a gross generalization and probably isn't fair - maybe there are one or two smart models out there who aren't complete gold diggers, but you'd never know that from watching this film.  These girls think that it's OK to have a "waiting list" sign-up sheet outside their apartment every night, and men show up and get on the list in order to have the opportunity to take the girls out, pay for their dinners at expensive restaurants, and not have sex with them after.  The models aren't prostitutes, after all, but they will let men pay for their dinner and NOT have sex, but somehow that seems even worse than being prostitutes.  Again, the screenwriter has no concept of how models work - everybody knows that models don't eat.

The third plotline is about a woman (yep, same woman) who's had bad luck with men her whole life, we see flashbacks of a boy in grade-school leaving her for another girl, another boy in high school leaving her for another man, and so on.  (Again, this seems a bit homophobic, but this was released in 2001, a different time in which having any representation of gay people at all was a step forward.  Also, kind of a step back.). For some reason, Amanda, who's had such terrible relationship luck her whole life - hey, maybe she's the problem? - still has some kind of hope that she'll find "the one" who will make her feel week in the knees, the way she feels when she starts destroying - sorry, restoring - a painting.  She fails to realize that change comes from within, you've got to change your attitude and outlook in order to be receptive to an adult relationship when one comes along, but no, Amanda keeps blaming the men, which only proves that the screenwriter doesn't know how dating works, either.  Amanda meets Jim when the Great Dane that he walks for an elderly neighbor starts humping her - and I don't mean humping her leg, I mean REALLY humping her, like she's bent over and the dog is really giving it to her. I try not to judge, but if this is the sort of thing you find funny, you really have to ask yourself why.

This is a big problem all along in this film, a lot of the humor is really from the gutter, like a part where three models find themselves in Jim's apartment, and they hide in the shower.  Jim comes home, goes into the bathroom and, well, farts and poops, as one does, and the three models clearly are disgusted by the sounds and the smell.  It's not funny, it's just gross.  Later on, the same girls are hiding in a DIFFERENT bathroom, and two workmen come in to unclog a toilet, and from their conversation, the models think the workmen are having gay sex.  But they're not, they're unclogging a toilet, and when they do, then the toilet in the stall with the models explodes and covers them all in excrement, which again, is not funny, it's just gross.  And this isn't how anonymous gay sex or plumbing works, from what little I know about those topics. 

The fourth plotline concerns a wacky misunderstanding, because the apartment Amanda and the models live in overlooks the apartment that Jim lives in, and they can watch him exercise and babysit for the neighbors and buy candy bars from Girl Scouts, and all the while Amanda is convinced he's got a dark side, just because she's dating him. Logical?  Then her fears are confirmed because it APPEARS that Jim is murdering a woman, which like everything else in this film, just isn't funny.  This leads to Amanda and the models breaking in to his apartment to find evidence, of which there is none, so Amanda therefore is open to a relationship with Jim, despite what she saw with her own eyes, which also makes zero sense.  I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for a man appearing to commit murder, but you might be asking how a screenwriter's going to find that.  

Then the fifth plotline concerns some kind of Russian gangster who might be laundering money or dresses or diamonds or something, it's all very unclear, and he also hires Amanda to help restore a damaged Russian painting, and the why of this is also very unclear.  I swear, there are about a hundred reversals in this film, and every time you learn one little fact about Jim or the way Amanda feels about him, five minutes later that fact is either contradicted or proven to be untrue.  You may find yourself screaming at the TV screen asking for the film to resolve one thing, just one thing, any one thing.  Keep dreaming. 

It all comes together (no, not really...) at a fashion show where everybody falls down a lot - and slapstick is really the lowest form of humor, as I've said in this space many times.  This just proves my point. I will point out that the fashion icon who hires the models for this show is played by Stanley DeSantis, who I sort of knew in the real world, he had a t-shirt company on the side, and my boss once had his company make him a batch of t-shirts with a couple of his print cartoons on them.  When we sold out and tried to order more, I tried to track down Stanley's company, only to find out that he had passed away in 2005, and so we couldn't order another batch. 

This movie wanted so bad to be part comedy, part romance, part suspense thriller and part action movie, but as you might expect, in order to be all of those things, it couldn't excel at any of them, and trying so hard to be everything to everybody, it ended up being a bad comedy, a poor romance and a terrible action movie. Knowing all this now, I wish I'd skipped this one.  Live and learn, as always.

Also starring Monica Potter (last seen in "Patch Adams"), Shalom Harlow (last seen in "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days"), Ivana Milicevic (last seen in "Just Like Heaven"), Sarah O'Hare, Tomiko Fraser, China Chow, Jay Brazeau (last seen in "The Perfect Score"), Stanley DeSantis (last seen in "The Fan"), James Kirk (last seen in "Two for the Money"), Erin-Marie Dykeman, Ben Silverman, Sam MacMillan, Betty Linde, Norma MacMillan, Bethoe Shirkoff, Tom Shorthouse, Timothy Olyphant (last seen in "Scream 2"), Brenda Schad, Gary Jones (last seen in "Connie and Carla"), Tanja Reichert (last seen in "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang"), Joe Pascual, Colin Lawrence (last seen in "Rememory"), J.B. Bivens, Jerry Wasserman, Raoul Ganeev, Brendan Beiser, Alexander Pervakov, 

RATING: 2 out of 10 throwing knives (cheese daggers?)