Easy

Much better than previous review would suggest. Charming and quirky rather than insubstantial. Characters not terribly deep but there is enough good dialogue and plot-twists to keep you entertained. Not meant as a deep treatise on relationships but grows on you as it progresses with aspects of the relationships amusingly reminiscent of reality.

EASY is not a "chick flick" (though women will definitely identify with the main character) and is not your standard Hollywood romantic comedy. EASY is the film all those Hugh Grant movies aspire to be - smart, funny, sexy, appealing to both sexes, not smug and patronizing.

Jaime (Marguerite Moreau) dates a lot of jerks and it never works out. She's beautiful, interesting, neurotic, and dates in all the wrong ways. Any 20-40-something woman who didn't grow up in a convent will smile and cringe as she identifies with Jaime's struggle to figure out who she is, what she wants and how to get it. She seems to take one step forward and two steps back with her family and friends getting all tangled up in the story (in brilliantly funny ways).

This movie isn't spoon-fed to it's audience with all the glossiness of Hollywood. The sex scenes feel real, with no soundtrack crescendo at the climax (or anti-climax); the characters are sympathetic and interesting; I especially liked Brian F. O'Byrne's performance. Weinstock showed playfulness in writing the overlapping relationships with a tongue-in-cheek humor, ala Shakespeare or modern British comedy.

EASY is a funny, emotional, sexy movie for thinking adults, not the lobotomized masses that can't get enough close-ups of Julia Roberts' smile or Meg Ryan's smirk. It's smarter than other films about contemporary relationships. It's also better acted.

Finally: If you don't fall in love with Marguerite Moreau after seeing this film, you're made of stone.

Miss it, unless you have an awful lot of spare time.

This film is about the love life of "Jamie," who is the title character. Jamie is a 20-something woman who sleeps with every guy in sight. Yup, she's easy all right. She generally seems to be okay with that. However, her random hook-ups just aren't satisfying her of late. She decides to launch into a period of celibacy, just like the main character in the mainstream film "40 Days and 40 Nights." In the mean time, her friends and relatives pair up, get pregnant, and get married in unusual combinations.

While Jamie's wild ways last, this is a cute and fun movie. The characters seem slightly more genuine than usual. Jamie's sex scenes are awfully hot. However, the film quickly looses steam for lack of any sort of real plot. Well, a meandering plot less Indy film is no rarity, but the script then tries to keep us interested by springing "cheap drama" out of every futon in LA. Out of nowhere there are pregnancies, out-of-wedlock births, gay marriages, inter-color marriages, geriatric marriages, etc. Overnight, Jamie is transformed from a free-wheeling free-love adventurer to a sexually delicate and vulnerable shrinking violet.

Perhaps if this film had been made 30 years ago such an unconnected series of events would have seemed interesting for being nonconformist. It might have been taken to indicate some change in society. These days, such relationships are not interesting in their own right.

So, the last half breaks down into a soap opera.

After summarizing this movie in the Summary, I find little else to say except to repeat, to wit, this movie is a slow 97 minutes, but interest never flags, especially if you're hot for Marguerite Moreau, as she's in a large majority of scenes.

The action, as it were, moves forward less on plot than on slice-of-life vignettes while our heroine -- who had a history of poorly-chosen paramours, of men who didn't appreciate her, leaving break-up messages on her phone machine during the opening credits -- copes with the ups and downs of dealing with two who finally do. Watching Moreau's portrayal through these transitions lends a real-life atmosphere to the proceedings, and is the primary delight of this film. All in all, an easy watch.

What an unexpected pleasure to watch a smart romantic comedy that doesn't condescend, and yet has everything work out in a most gratifying way. Jane Weinstock might not be the Jane Austen of our age, but she has the same intelligent approach to tracking our desire for romance, our foibles, the lessons we have to learn before we've earned our match. The actors, particularly the two sisters, do a beautiful job. Moreau is luminous. The camera work is terrific. I'm a fan.