It’s a curious thing when plotless dating-advice books get turned into feature films. Woody Allen went for outright silliness in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask, but it would seem that romantic comedy is the more usual approach. Sex and the Single Girl (1964) was an early example, and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003) a more recent one. This ensemble-cast movie is adapted from the similarly titled bestseller by Sex and the City staffers Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, but might well be called No Sex for the Single Girl.
It takes place in Baltimore, in an alternate universe in which pixie-cute Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) can’t even get a guy to call her. Her coworker (Jennifer Aniston) can’t get her boyfriend (Ben Affleck) to marry her. And her other coworker (Jennifer Connelly) can’t get her husband to fuck her (or admit he’s sneaking smokes). Drew Barrymore’s Mary somehow fits into the movie, and she can’t seem to find a date either. As Jay Leno joked, if these women can’t find a man, what hope is there for anyone else? (“Anyone else”—the plain, the old, the chubby, even the nonwhite—gets relegated to brief, modestly funny interview segments that occassionally punctuate the main yuppie storyline.)
Gigi’s plot is the one that most direct ties into the book, whose pithy Q&A format has the authors answering fake letters under such headings as “The ‘Maybe He Doesn’t Want to Ruin the Friendship’ Excuse.” Gigi uses that one and others to explain why her soul mate (who seems to be any guy she talks to in a bar) won’t come calling. I suppose this is the sort of film that is meant to attract women, yet if they take the movie at all seriously—not a wise course, perhaps—how can it not leave them feeling depressed? The single ones pine for unavailable men, and the married one blithely remodels while her husband’s eyes wander to a flirtatious blonde (Scarlett Johanssen). Johanssen, perhaps because she’s the only cast member under 30, plays the only one of these women not made to seem desperate. On the other hand, she’s also the one who thinks her dream guy is already married. Maybe.
Well, it is hard to adapt these sorts of self-help books without pandering to reductive stereotypes about both sexes. But the book at least reminds women that men don’t hold all of the cards in the world of romance. Its message seems to be, you can do better. The movie’s is more like, all you can do is hope. In crafting their loosely constructed story, screenwriters Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (Never Been Kissed) might have at least provided a contrasting female character. Someone like Samantha in Sex and the City, not necessarily a sexual predator, but someone self-confident and wise enough not to need a self-help book.
Of course, the men fare only slightly better; they’re mostly seen as players who can only be made to commit via ultimatum. The exception is metrosexual real-estate agent Conor, whose character is probably better developed than any of the female ones. Deftly played by Kevin Connolly, he also has some of the funnier bits as he works to both appeal to his gay clientele and win back his ex.
And there are other funny moments (despite the complaints above), like when one of the women intentionally breaks a vase in a rage, then immediately brings out the broom and dustpan. Only occasionally does it get too cute. The trio of obviously gay men who serve as substitute girlfriends with tart, slangy advice (“MySpace is the new booty call!”) for Mary are recent, but still tired, clichés. But at least there’s not a clothes-changing montage.
I’m still not sure what the point of making an advice book into a romantic comedy is. At least two of the endings of this one seem to directly contradict the book’s thesis. But it’s a catchy title, and that’s important.
IMDB link
viewed 1/29/09 (screening at Ritz Bourse); reviewed 1/30/09 and 2/6/09
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