Swinging with the Finkels

Alvin (Martin Freeman) and Ellie Finkel (Mandy Moore) seem to be a happily married couple in London. Peter (Jonathan Silverman) and Janet (Melissa George) are their married best friends. With issues in the marriage, Ellie suggests swinging.

Freeman and Moore make for a bland couple. They don't have much chemistry which leaves them without any rooting interest. I don't care about saving their marriage. The characters are flat. The humor is cruel but worst of all, it's broadly bland. With all the inappropriate takes and foul language, none of it is that funny, not even as an accidental shock humor. I'm not sure who writer/director Jonathan Newman is. His resume doesn't stand out to me. It's surprising that he has a cast of good actors. I don't know what they read in the script.

This movie has some really funny moments, considerable charm, and a nice sensibility, all too rare in most modern British films.

If you are married (or have ever been in a relationship of more than five minutes), you will be able to identify with the Finkels' problems and be amused by the varied and intriguing solutions they come up with to add some spice to their ailing sex life. There is also a nice contrast with the other main couple and we see how both couples deal with the same problem in rather different ways.

The unusual locations in London were used to great effect and the art direction was excellent.

PS: After watching this film cucumbers will always make you smile.

I hesitate to call this a straight comedy but there are plenty of laughs. It's just that on my TiVo this was identified only as "romance, comedy". It is my opinion that mainly in the second half, this becomes more of a "comedy-drama". But it is entertaining and intelligent nevertheless. It's not constant laugh out loud zaniness.

Mandy Moore is not beautiful but attractive and likeable, and certainly smart and capable of speaking her mind.

Jerry Stiller stands out in a few scenes as Ellie's grandfather. He is a nearly perfect grumpy old man but seems happy with his longtime wife. I don't know who Beverley Klein is but she seems likeable enough. Both are presented with a nasty surprise when they make a surprise visit.

Melissa George does a great job too. Not the most likeable character, but she effectively shows us frustration. I will say this. Janet is not that pretty during most of the movie but she is just plain hot, with gorgeous hair and gorgeous everything else. toward movie's end.

I don't remember his name, but Ellie's gay co-worker also stands out.

Another standout actor does nails and is Asian. I don't remember her name, and she did have only two lines (in different scenes), but she made the most of them. Elizabeth Tan is listed in the credits as "pedicurist", so that must be her

What I really liked about this movie was the music. There are a couple of classical works, but most of the music is jazz, and the good kind of jazz. Not smooth jazz, and not the intellectual, depressing Miles Davis type of jazz either. Fun music that makes me think of Ed Sullivan. And of course the pleasant background music so many movies have. There are also a couple of vocal "standards", really nice music that mature people enjoyed in the 60s while the kids were shocking their parents by blasting this evil rock and roll. One of those accompanies one of the most enjoyable sequences, with flashbacks of Ellie and Alvin meeting in college and the early stages of their relationship, followed by Ellie looking at wedding pictures.

And there is also "music" that reminds me of the green truck that wakes me on Thursdays. In the bar when Ellie's co-worker and his husband (he's quite a character too) explain "swinging", and Ellie's fashion show. Other than the music, that's pretty impressive, and the "music" is appropriate, I guess. Another scene has Peter playing a video game with heavy metal.

Is this family friendly? Given the subject matter, do you even have to ask? Especially when the couples are being interviewed. Once the one couple is selected, it's done quite tastefully, but overall, so many words had to be bleeped for broadcast TV that some scenes make no sense at all.

Stay around for the credits, because some of the funniest and naughtiest material from the couples who auditioned is still to come.

Overall, it's a pretty enjoyable experience.

Oh dear. Yet another failed attempt to do a 'Four Weddings'. Take a selection of 'hilarious' middle-class characters, throw in a bit of sexual experimentation, some London landmarks and a barrage of romantic clichés, and you have the formula for this soggy mass of mediocrity. The script is banal, the characters unappealing, and the hodge-podge of nationalities baffling (would you believe English, American, Canadian, Australian, Indian and Eurasian characters all together in anything except the Olympics?). Martin Freeman plays a remarkably unsympathetic character, and has little to do except pull his usual variety of faces. The problem with the British film industry is that it's only possible to get funding for this sort of gloop, or for gangster films.

The most cliché gathered Movie I have ever seen. An Indian, with the oh so funny (?) Indian/English accent, the gay Spanish man with a lisp, the french gay guy that wishes he was a woman, the traditional Asian woman at the Nail salon,who of course, gets into your conversation and is, of course, very "sexually outspoken".

Men who goes to the same Nail salon and sits there with facial masks and "treats themselves" and is talking to the same Asian woman.

I mean come on.

Think of all the bad lines, scenes that are supposed to be funny, that you just roll your Eyes at, all the American Pie Movies, take them and put them in a blender. Out comes this Movie.

Enjoy.