Sam

After reading the positive reviews here, I thought that this was possibly one of those underrated movies that don't catch on because the plot was too feminist-driven or silly or whatever. Boy, was I wrong.

At first I thought the acting was bad (and it was at times), but then I realized that it wasn't the actors as much as it was a combination of a terrible script, terrible direction and sub-par production.

I expected the movie to play up some of the gender norm clichés, so as to highlight the change from Sam to Samantha. But this movie goes further than that. It is clear that everybody involved in the final production of this movie has never met a real person in their life. The clichés were not funny but offensive. I have to imagine this movie was written by some rich kid in Beverly Hills and their connected parents helped to pay for production.

Every character was a ridiculous caricature. I don't know who I am offended for more, men or women. Even the non-gender things were clichéd, like the names of things. Every line felt like it was written by a young high school student. I mean there's concise, and then there is straight to the point regardless as to whether the dialogue is believable or not.

This movie was not funny, not smart, not well put together, and not worth your time.

I gave it three stars: The first because it IS a movie. The second for giving out-of work actors some screen time. ...?

Didn't like it at first, but stick with it-it keeps getting better! The transformation from so-so to good is surprising. Glad I didn't abandon like I was tempted to. It's worth watching. Enjoy!

This film starts incredibly slowly. The camera work and lighting are good, but if it weren't for that, it would play like a college film project. The dialogue is slow, and predictable, with unnecessary pauses and characters feeling very 2 dimensional. The pacing was painful at the beginning, which had me reaching for the remote just looking for a scene change. Once Natalie enters the picture however, the energy improves, though the pace and timing never fully recover.

Fortunately Natalie's energy and interesting character choices made this film entertaining enough (at least relative the the price I paid) to see the movie through to the end.

In the end, despite its reasonable-budget looking visual style, a well acted female lead, and beautiful cityscape cinematography worthy of a much better production, this movie is a slow, occasionally funny, but largely forgettable comedy that will have you wondering what else you could have done with the last 2 hours of your life.

Really quite enjoyed the film. Lead actress was good and played part well.

Had us guessing until the end, which you need to watch

I've given this movie one more star than I might otherwise have because, despite its flaws, I really enjoyed this one a lot.

The only reason I saw this movie in the first place is because after watching Goodbye Charlie (1964) I wanted to see all the remakes for comparison. I found and watched three true remakes and eight similarly premised movies that I wouldn't call remakes. Of this dozen movies (including the original), I liked Sam the best by far. Natalie Knepp really sold the female version of the main character as a man suddenly in a woman's body. What's more she sold it while making the role likeable. And, she made her basically despicable character extremely amusing and likeable despite her flaws. It was easy to care how things turned out for her. Sein Kleier, Sara Scott, and Brock Harris were particularly good in their roles as well. And, none of the acting was bad. But, Natalie was the true stand-out.

That all being said, I can't help but find fault as well. The office environment, while played for laughs, is unbelievable in this day and age. Seymour and Lulu are just a bit too silly. While Brock Harris had his character pegged, he really needed to have the same hair and eye color as Natalie for one of the plot points to work.

The movie is unrated, but I would mostly call it PG13. Older kids should enjoy it safely. There is some profanity, but it's infrequent compared to a lot of movies.