Apartment Hunting

The thing about romantic comedies, especially ones dealing with yuppies, is that they stand of fall on the charms of the cast. Unfortunately here the casting director dropped the ball. The lead is an unappealing sub-Baldwin clone, his buddy a bland shlepp, his wife a cold fish (they're supposed to be hot for each other, so yeah it's a problem), his ubiquitious gay helper looks lost. Only the french girl used as a romantic foil has any appeal, but even this rests on her constant pouting and doe-eyedness. The plot is paper thin, and the amount of coincidences and conveniences the writer has taken just cause weariness. The direction is all telegraphed and you don't usually see this many lighting mistakes (shadows, unmatched lighting sources, etc.) in a film shown by HBO. There's also this annoying singer used, I suppose, as a po-mo commenting device. Unfortunately the singing and the singer as bland and boring as the rest of the cast. You don't have to cast ALL your friends in the movie no matter how low a budget you have.

Oh and the film is called "Apartment Hunting" but they drop this idea 10 minutes into the movie and move onto phone dating instead. Lame.

A slightly better film which feels and looks similar is "Breaking Up" with Selma Hayek & Russell Crowe. So you might want to check that out instead.

I found this movie accidentally-TV was on the Movie Network and it was the jazz singer and score in the background that first caught my attention. Bit by bit I was pulled into it. The film is no work of art, but several of the characters are very likable and the story though convoluted and unlikely is an interesting take on people just trying to connect while figuring out who they are and what they want out of life. Great score and solid acting make this fairly interesting light romantic comedy a very pleasant diversion. One last thing-try not to fall under the spell cast by French-Canadian actress Valérie Jeanneret-I dare you!

What a terrible movie. I hunted it out due to my interest in the reclusive and eccentric singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O'Hara who, I was informed, appeared and provided music. The first thing that hits you is the cheap, TV-movie look of the thing. Then the acting - wooden, flat and distractingly bad. The plot wanders all over the map, but you give up caring long before the denouement. A couple of minutes in, MMO'H does indeed appear - quirk alert - singing and dancing on the street, like a sort of modern day Greek chorus, a service she provides throughout the movie. Again, distracting, and a really poor use of the singer's time. A huge disappointment after going to a lot of trouble to track it down.