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Memorable, crazy movie

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Sure, every man's life is suddenly ameliorated when a supermodel lands in his lap. And even though he's admittedly spent more time on his abs than on his marriage, after she runs off on a fling with another man, she'll spend the rest of the script trying to get back into his arms. Hollywood still loves a good fairytale.The movie revolves around Jack's "journal." He's nearly killed over it, but the cops are not called in. He knows who attacked him, but the cops are not called in. He finds out who initiated the attack, but the cops are not called in. The most telling of all: the journal will make Barbi Ling's career skyrocket; it holds Jack's secrets, holds information that contradicts his testimony in court, holds information that can destroy Jack, her ultimate goal. So, does she copy the pages? Store it away in a vault? Keep it in a safe place? No, she travels all over the city with it and loses it twice back to Jack. Finally, in the end, Jack gets his journal back, threatens to call the cops (duh), takes back the wife who's cuckolded him, and quits his business so he can now live life again (something that would have been forced upon him had Ling published her story).As a comedy, it hardly works. As a drama it doesn't work. As a juvenile exercise in how not to write a script, it excels.

After commenting last week on Man About Town I looked up Mike Binder on his blog. I ended up buying a DVD from his Freebird connection for $17 for a non-theatrical-release film called The Search for John Gissing. How could I not acquire it after watching the trailer for it on the blog showing Alan Rickman and Janeen Garafalo in a London based comedy about international business. If I had seen it when it was made, back in the year 2000 or so, I would have thought the film was the freshest comedy ever. But since 2000 I've seen Extras on cable with Bob Gervais and John Gissing uses similar devices to entertain us. Close, oh what the heck, still give it a cigar.

Caught this during Showtime's free-view as the first of what (I hope) was an unintentional Ben Affleck Marathon, as this stinker was followed by another stinker (The Third Wheel), then one more stinker for sh*ts and giggles (Reindeer Games). Why a Lifetime Razzie has so far eluded Benny's talentless clutches is beyond me! As one of the posters said, just when you think he can't sink any lower, he does!You think Jack A-Hole would have figured out what his minions REALLY think of him when they haul him to that dentist! Au contraire! After beating the crap out of the guy who beat the crap out of him, he goes back to the SAME DENTIST when he should be hauling the clown into court for making him look like Tom Cruise's retarded cousin! And some people wonder why this turkey was shelved for 2 years!The female characters are even more loathsome than the male characters: Barbi is a Dragon Lady racist cliché; Mrs. Jack A-Hole is a brainless Trophy Wife; and the less said about the Sharon Stone wanna-be, the better. At the climax of this masterpiece, Trophy Wife and Dragon Lady duke it out over Jack A-Hole's precious journal in one room, the Sharon Stone wanna-be crosses and uncrosses her legs in another room, and Jack A-Hole's Top Client (over whom he kicked Trophy Wife out of the house) drops in to beg forgiveness. That whirring sound you hear is Preston Sturges spinning in his grave!So who winds up running Jack A-Hole's agency after he and Trophy Wife kiss and make up in his fish tank (I kid you not)? The token lesbian, who has more cojones in her pinkie than all the men in the movie put together!

Okay, first of all, Ben Affleck is one of the partners of a high-powered Hollywood agency. About halfway through, he moans about never being able to close a deal or get things done. How the hell did someone like that become head of a high-powered Hollywood agency? Second, why do we care about him? He's shallow, uninteresting and his life is meaningless. That's supposed to be the point, I gather, but this is no Jerry MacGuire and no hidden interesting depths are to be found here. Third, his supermodel wife (!) has absolutely no character. She mopes around about how much she loves him (even though she's been having an affair with one of his clients), but we learn nothing about her except that she has no personality. The whole movie's emotional center is supposed to be whether he gets back together with her, but we have no reason to think they should be together in the first place (and no, the idiotic virtual CGI sequence of them scuba-diving doesn't provide that context). Fourth, the Asian woman who steals Ben's journal - every time the agency folk meet this woman, she (A) HAPPENS to have the journal in her purse (which would be the stupidest thing in the world to carry to a meeting with them) and (B) they STEAL it from her and run in a merry Keystone Cops-like chase that's completely absurd and unnecessary since...IT'S NOT HERS TO BEGIN WITH. IT'S STOLEN PROPERTY. CALL THE POLICE, YOU SIX PEOPLE WITH CELL PHONES!!! But, no, no, that would make sense. And finally (although I could go on and on), the ending where Ben and Rebecca ride away from Hollywood to who knows where. I thought to myself, where are they going? They can only function in Hollywood. They have no other existence beyond Hollywood. The viewer can't conceive of them anywhere else the way they've been presented. This movie made absolutely no emotional or logical sense, I didn't understand the writer-director's take on Ben Affleck's character at all. I don't want to bag on Ben - he's actually good when used correctly = I blame the script and direction that left him standing around with egg on his face (and on his Armani suit).Oh, I did like Howard Hesseman.