A Case of You

A reviewer said that our protagonist was basing his interest in the girl solely on looks. That is not true. He saw her every day interacting with customers at the coffee shop. He liked her spirit.

Reviewers also can't understand why she would like our guy, especially since he was a faker. But you can't account for attraction. She saw the real him all along and liked it. Perhaps she was flattered that he made such an effort to accommodate her interests.

Women have intuition that guides them in relationships. She liked him. Let's accept that and move on.

Just Long's comedic timing was perfect in this one. It's like he was channeling Woody Allen without actually copying him. I also thought the cameos were fine. You had a fast-talking publisher, a gay midget coffee guy, an oafish ex-boyfriend, and a wacky guitar teacher, all played by stars. They were good. No one went over the top, which would have been very easy to do.

I think the best thing in this one was the roommate and his girlfriend. I'm not familiar with either actor, but they were natural, funny, down-to-earth, and genuinely helpful.

I don't know the lead girl, Ms. Wood, but she sure is lovely. If her character was not a child of hippies, she would have a jock boyfriend.

There was so much potential for this flick to fall into "Indie" stereotypes with a soundtrack, self-conscious performances, existential philosophy, and some depressing commentary on life. But this one didn't do that. The quirky pixie girl actually turned out to be a solid person with a forgiving soul and plenty of patience.

Although I would love to know how she supports herself.

One thing to note is that all her interests are wildly Left Wing, but she does explain that being due to her parentage. But I guess you could say that the one "Indie" stereotype is that the characters almost always love Godless, artsy stuff, and like most rom-coms, they seem to always live in New York. Trust me folks, N.Y. is not romantic at all. It's dirty, dangerous, crowded, and smelly.

Good movie. Not particularly memorable, but worth a date night. Enjoy.

I'll admit right up front I quit watching after an hour, not because it was bad but because it was nothing new. If you're unfamiliar with the "manic pixie" story, think of Natalie Portman in "Garden State" or Zooey Deschanel in everything she's ever done. Or if you want to get right down to it, there's the original and greatest manic pixie that ever was: Audrey Hepburn. The formula is you take 1 lovable loser guy, usually stiff, awkward or outright lame, and you pair him with a girl who is hazardously spontaneous and carefree as if she's still suffering the effects of novacaine from the dentist an hour earlier. Personally I love these kinds of films, but I love them because it's interesting to see the unique angle each one offers. But here in "A Case of You" there is no angle.

So what we get are endless scenes of the guy making a fool out of himself and the girl pirouetting through the scenes not noticing. There's a very weak, contrived "conflict" (the guy is facebook stalking her), but I don't have to watch the last 20 minutes to guess exactly how it ends. I'm guessing: revelation, confrontation, reconciliation. It's the standard formula just like the rest of the story was up to the point I turned it off.

You might enjoy this movie if you're not familiar with the manic pixie formula, but if you are, then watching this flick is sort of like reading a teen vampire book. You know exactly how it's going to go but you read it anyway because War & Peace gives you a headache.

Where this movie fails, beyond simply being a lukewarm copy of all the others, is that there is nothing quirky about the manic pixie (Evan Rachel Wood). There is no depth, no bizarre secret past, no soul. For example, in the excellent "Garden State" we get Natalie Portman who is a manic pixie on the surface but we soon learn that she suffers from a spectrum of problematic mental issues like pathological lying. It gives her character complexity and makes her interesting to us. Similarly if we look at Audrey Hepburn's manic pixie (take "Breakfast at Tiffany's") we get the same superficial happy-go-lucky exterior but we are fully aware that she is more or less a prostitute. Again, tremendous complexity to an otherwise predictable character.

But here in "A Case for You" there is absolutely no complexity. There is nothing out of the ordinary about either of the two, except that he's an awkward loser and she's a social butterfly.

I do give it points for some excellent (yet all too brief) cameos by Sam Rockwell as a hilariously egotistical guitar teacher, Peter Dinklage as a riotously funny coffee shop barista, and Vince Vaughn as a fast talking corporate suit who ought to have a Bluetooth headset surgically attached to his head. These scenes absolutely carried the film, but ultimately the story itself gives us nothing new.

Instead of this I would recommend any of the others I mentioned, as well as an unknown Japanese gem "Shiki-Jitsu" (Ritual) written by, and starring, Ayako Fujitani who is Steven Seagal's daughter (NO RESEMBLANCE!).

"You could become the man of her dreams if you wanted to." Sam (Long) is a struggling writer who has a crush on Birdie (Wood), the barista at the coffee place he frequents. He has no idea how to approach her until his friend brings up the idea of looking at her Facebook profile. Sam studies what he sees and becomes everything she is looking for. When she begins to fall for him Sam rethinks his choices. I am really becoming a Justin Long fan. In every movie he is in he is very easy to like and very funny. After the amazing Best Man Down movie I was looking forward to seeing this. While this wasn't as good as that one this was still very enjoyable. What could have been a generic cookie cutter romantic comedy was changed just enough to make it interesting and fun to watch. The best part was that it wasn't 100% predictable, more like 90% but still... The movie is more or less about a non-creepy (not totally at least) stalker who gets the girl by not being himself. It had the possibility of being totally creepy and borderline scary but the performances and the writing made it sweet and funny. I did like this quite a bit and recommend it. Overall, the sweetest and least creepy stalker movie I have ever seen. I give this a B+.

In the age of social media, dating has become infinitely more complicated, and the ability to pore over your loved one's Facebook profile or Twitter feed to find those little idiosyncracies that make them unique is something we've probably all experienced. But what happens when you start taking it a bit too far?

Written by Justin Long (who also stars), A Case of You follows struggling writer Sam, whose daily trips to a local coffee shop have left him infatuated with the free-spirited Birdie (Evan Rachel Wood). Unfortunately, Birdie loses her job before Sam works up the nerve to ask her out, but never fear - with a little bit of Facebook stalking, Sam can not only find out where she'll be next, he can also begin molding himself into her ideal match.

Yes, it sounds more than a little creepy, but Long is charming and charismatic enough to keep us interested, and Sam's willingness to put himself into incredibly awkward situations in order to impress Birdie result in some humorous exchanges. There are also a few laugh-out-loud moments that come courtesy of Keir O'Donnell as Sam's roommate and Peter Dinklage as a flamboyantly sassy barista.

While amusing at times, A Case of You doesn't stray far from the typical romantic comedy template: boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy learns important life lesson and tries to win girl back. The chemistry between Long and Wood is believable, and watching them together is far from boring, but the film never aspires to be more than a paint-by-numbers affair. It's a decent first effort for screenwriter Long, but certainly nothing that reinvents the genre.

-- Brent Hankins, www.nerdrep.com

On paper the story might work but in the film it does not. He fakes it until he makes it? That's not making sense. It's a recipe for disaster, likely to end in murder-suicide. Also, not credibly acted, and the is girl much too consistently nice to be real. Fake on fake!