Text me (2010) is an independent short film directed by Bayoy Bennet and Daniel Lir. The film stars Matt Bennet as Noah and Jill shackner as Jamie. After meeting on Facebook, Noah and Jamie decide to go have dinner together. Of course, nothing goes as planned. Technology, after bringing the couple together, threatens to tear them apart.
The film is quite bad. First, there are a few distracting editing issues to note.
The film is about technology getting in the way of genuine human interaction. My second problem with the editing is related to that. The characters look at their phones constantly in the film. Instead of cutting to a close-up of the phone, the phone display takes up the whole screen, which caught me off guard the first time. I have mixed feelings about that editing choice. Sure, it works as a visual metaphor of technology getting in the way of the characters. Yeah, this was before BBC's Sherlock revolutionized texting in movies by having the text in the same shot with the character reading or writing it. Still something about it seemed wrong to me. Also, the continuity of the phone clocks doesn't match.
There are some other continuity errors in the film but it's not worth it to go through them one by one. Instead, I'd like to focus on one particular shot - the establishing shot of the restaurant's front door. The same exact shot of the door is used twice in the film. In addition, the shot looks like it's from a cheap stock image site. Apparently it's not, because there is a still photographer credited on Imdb. Overall, the film is shot in a bland and uninteresting way. I have no Idea how it took two directors and a cinematographer to shoot this film.
The script is also bad. As a character Noah is the typical shy nerd that you see all the time in movies. Especially in the beginning Noah has a hard time coming up with things to say to Jamie. They met on Facebook and Noah somehow convinced Jamie to go out with him. Why couldn't Noah just continue with the topics they were discussing before?
Jamie also acts oddly. I'm trying to avoid spoilers as best as I can, but near the end she makes a decision and completely seems to change her mind later with a text message. It was also unclear to me how old the characters were. They seem like young adults, but Jamie's mom is constantly looking after her.
I have many more issues with the script, but I'm just going to mention one more of them. According to the official plot synopsis made by the filmmakers, the diner is owned by the mafia. I didn't realize that at all. Sure, the waiters were Italian gangster stereotypes, but that's it. The restaurant being owned by the mafia isn't even an important part of the story and the writers really don't take the concept anywhere.
The isn't entirely bad. It made me smile a couple of times and everyone making it seemed to try their best.
