Textuality

The above is a good enough excuse for me to go back over a scene.

However, this isn't the best date movie. It will raise too many questions in your companion's mind and you'll have to guard your phone from snooping forever afterward.

That said, it's not as painfully bad as some reviews would have you believe. The moral of the story is simple. When you find something real, you have to make a hard choice: to back out of all the other fun, fleeting entanglements, no matter how messy it might get - or let the real one walk.

Yes, the male lead is wooden. Most of the characters aren't nuanced. The female lead carries the emotions for the whole cast. She doesn't show a lot of range, but it's there. The most believable to me are the Three Musketeers - I may have met each of them although not under similar circumstances.

But the very awkwardness of the acting and the filming make this little Canadian film a more real portrayal of the confusions and mistaken assumptions and unavoidable wounds of the current e-fueled, spoiled-for-choice world out there. Maybe the real problem with this movie is that it was released five years ago, before quite so many people had grown into and through this inescapable slice of 21st-century life.

Despite a (very) wooden performance by Jason Lewis, this is a really honest, and amusing look at the mores & communication growing pains of the early 21st century. It's an all-Canadian cast & crew, and looks like a great debut for screenwriter Liam Card. The cinematography and lighting are amazing for a low-budget film, and the musical score is fabulous. In fact, the Ray Charles title song (Hide Nor Hair) debuts with this film -- AMAZING. Living & dying by the sword... "Just Retribution" at its finest, yet ends on a hugely positive & instructive note. There's hope. The bowling-alley scene says it all... should be on the watch-list for SOC 101 or PSYCH 250. Overall, it's lots of fun & worth the watch. MM

I don't often write reviews, but while watching this movie I felt like I had to warn others not to waste money on it.

None of the characters have personalities. Even the main character is completely shallow and the only funny thing about him is his arrogance towards anything (which may just be bad acting).

Carly Pope is great. She's the most dynamic character in the film, very much thanks to her acting, less thanks to the script.

Oh and another thing that was kinda funny were the guys she was dating. Probably the most original characters in the film, but too little screen time and as a result very shallow. I'd watch a film with just those three.

I think this movie is a great study (or warning) for any emerging script writers and possibly directors in what you get if your characters don't have any character. If the main goal is the storyline rather than making the audience bond, then why not write a book instead.

This is a cute movie, if somewhat edgy. The sound went out a lot, which seems unnecessary. It was sometimes hard to follow what was being said. That's how bad it was. Do we really need that much bad language to tell a story?

I never watched an episode of "Will and Grace", so I'm not sure why I felt Eric McCormack should have been more appealing. I don't even know the man. But here he's supposed to be a jerk, and he does that well.

Liam Card gives the standout performance as Mike, and Carly Pope is quite good as Simone, though I'm not that crazy about her. And Kristen Hager, as Dani, does a great job in the scene where she is showing her own art.

And about the art. Of course, I'm not a person who would truly appreciate art that doesn't look like what it represents. But I would say the artists whose work is shown in this movie are talented.

We saw the romance in the opening credits, but with no audio other than an enjoyable song by Ray Charles. On the subject of Ray Charles, why is one of his biggest hits performed here by someone else, with RAP? And why were we given the impression the music was going to be good? One good song at the beginning, and maybe a few others, and four scenes with nice instrumental music. But for me, the music wasn't that good overall.

A curious choice made early in the movie: isn't art class supposed to be colorful? I'm sure there is some artistic reason for this, but everything looks brown. It's like that TV series a few years back where the detective and his family were in a car accident. If his son survived, everything was blue. Then he would wake up and it was his wife who survived, and everything with yellow and orange. There's a name for this, I'm sure.

Overall, I think this is more than just the ordinary romantic comedy.

If you watch this film you will believe that Jason Lewis definitely hit his peak as Smith Jarrod in "Sex and The City." His high, nasal voice constantly distracted me from trying to find him attractive. Even though 30% of his shots were of him naked to the waist (I am female), it was not enough to overcome his lack of acting ability or chemistry with anyone in the movie. I suppose the "message" of the film was a comment upon how superficial and incapable of intimacy we have become. By creating characters that had absolutely no chemistry with each other and just went through the motions of sex, the makers of this film succeeded. I have seen Eric McCormack and Jason Lewis do great work, so I can only blame it on the director, Warren Sonoda and the writer, Liam Card. Even though the film made an episode of "Gossip Girl" seem deep and meaningful, the final 20 minutes were the most painful to get through. There was simply no substance. My advise is that even if it is free to view, save your time for anything else.