Woody Light (And Vapid)
FILM: Love and Sex
DIRECTOR: Valerie Breiman
STARRING: Famke Janssen, Jon Favreau
GRADE: C-
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MEN ARE MARS, WOMEN ARE MASOCHISTIC: KATE (FAMKE JANSSEN) FALLS FOR LOSER
ARTIST ADAM IN LOVE AND SEX.
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Writer/director Valerie Breiman's Love and Sex is one of those movies
that gives itself away completely in its trailers. If you've been to Canal
Place and seen the previews for this film, then you not only know what's going
to happen, you've already derived what little pleasure the picture has to offer
-- more, actually, because you haven't had to endure the movie itself.
Love and Sex is the story of Kate Wells (Famke Janssen), a
beautiful young magazine writer who knows, according to her own assessment, "10
times more about blow jobs than about relationships." Kate has gone through
more than a dozen lovers when she meets painter Adam Levy (Jon Favreau, who
looks to have lost a step or two since his leading-man debut in
Swingers). And thus we lapse into the story of a couple who fall in
love, fall out of love and fall back in love with all the inventiveness of a
knock-knock joke. Annie Hall this most certainly is not.
Love and Sex squanders its credibility from the moment Kate
and Adam meet. Kate's history of failed relationships, typified by her memory
of the sixth-grade boy who kissed her and betrayed her almost in an instant,
has left her off-balance with men, all the more so with men she finds really
attractive. Yes, we've seen this on Ally McBeal, only with humor and a
lot more imagination. Then Kate meets Adam and things start to click with
surprising ease. Kate is surprised because things click. We are surprised
because a) Adam
is not exactly a hunk and, more important,
b) he's a
jerk.
So first, they're in love. And then one day, Adam gets a truly
novel idea. Everything happens at light speed and without the flimsiest of
provocations. As an alternative to staying with Kate who is beautiful, smart
and nice, why not dump her and start dating unattractive, ill-mannered nitwits?
Yes, men are jackasses, and Adam is the king of jackasses. So that makes Kate
the queen of dopes. 'Cause she just carries that torch for lumpy, smarmy old
Adam no matter how badly he treats her. Sure, she dates other guys. And indeed,
the other guys are better looking and better lovers. But she's a true McGrew.
And when Adam finally comes to his hare-brained senses, well, there you have
some bad storytelling. Love and Sex covers narrative areas that Woody
Allen has visited repeatedly. So the material isn't the problem. But Allen's
work wouldn't amount to much without its humor and penetrating insight into the
complicated nature of romance. Love and Sex tries to sail off without
either of those two crucial ingredients, and as a result doesn't get too far
from shore.
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