Fish Without a Bicycle

So I'm a sucker for insanely cheap dvds with silly movie covers and/or titles. I came across this movie in a discount store where pretty much everything costs a low, low price of two dollars. I check out the cover and blurb, the title sounds a bit silly, maybe even funny. The cover looks like it was done of Windows Paint. I laugh as I pay for it and grin amusingly. I forget about it for awhile. One day my mum asks if we can watch the movie one , I say 'to hell with it, what have we got to lose?'. Well, I can now answer that question. Dignity. I lost my dignity and respect for Jenna Matison and the producers and directors of this 'indie flick'. Ten minutes into the movie and I've already become disinterested and bored. Yes, the plot was predictable from the very beginning, no the script wasn't "witty" or "sharp" or even "indie" for that matter. I didn't see the humour at all! The film was very amateur-ish and tedious. I couldn't bear it any longer, forty-five minutes later, I turn it off feeling as though I wasted a part of my life. I lost forty-five minutes of my life to this garbage? This poorly-filmed, savoury dialogue-infested steaming pile of feces? So believe me as i say this: as tempting as the quirky title sounds, refrain from watching or even buying this piece of sheizen.

"Fish Without a Bicycle" is more like "Script Without an Independent Thought," and there's minimal unintentional comedy in the directorial debut of "Beverly Hills 90210" alum Brian Austin Green. BAG's direction is pretty empty (empty bag- get it) but Hitchcock, Kubrick or Kurosawa couldn't have saved this one.

Writer/star Jenna Mattison is a disaster; physically, the big hair and unnatural Joker smile are really distracting, and her character Julianna is a child emotionally. Jules leaves a good guy (Brad Rowe) for a bad guy (Bryan Callen), and if that doesn't work out, there's another good guy (BAG) waiting with baited breath. She has an equally unlikable best friend Vicki, who influences Jules to date more using some metaphor about eating lots of cheeses until you find your favorite. You're so profound Vicki, even if you're a girl who looks like "The Crow" and the singer from AFI simultaneously. Then Jules meets a homeless women who has similarly oversimplified advice like "Sometimes you gotta be lost to find your way." Come on Jules, that's your sage??

Callen ("Mad TV," "Fat Actress") is pretty funny as the pompous play director who wants Jules, gets her, doesn't want her, wants someone else and then wants her back, but if that's the lone selling point of the film, yikes. Vicki's late revelation makes no sense given how self-important she is, Ronnie is not at all how Yankee fans act, and BAG's character Ben is a fool if he goes along with Jules' final plan, which not surprisingly, is no plan at all. The biggest regret of "Fish Without a Bicycle" is not giving enough time to Jules' "Cowgirl's Blues," so we could see a bad actress play a bad actress acting poorly in a play.

This is the first time a female has written a movie about being a woman. It's so true to life when you look at the way she acts in each situation. People sometimes make choices that other people will never understand.

For instance: in the film, the girl leaves her perfect boyfriend to date a charismatic smarmy type of guy who is also cute. That may seem strange to some people, but it's not! I know many girls who've broken up with 'the perfect guy', and I know many girls who've also been head over heels with a guy who is so smooth it's sickening...

That's what's so perfect about this film. It has so many different stories within it, all of which show a situation to which every mid twenties female can relate.

Another bonus is that the three male leads: Brad Rowe, Brian Callen, and Brian Green are gorgeous. The two female leads are both hot. To top it off, every person in the film is amazingly talented, with meticulous comic timing.

My comment: Great film, well made, and can't wait to see the next one by this bunch.

Megan Stanley