A film review by Craig J. Koban |
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HITCH
Hitch: Will Smith / Sara: Eva Mendes
/ Albert: Kevin James / Allegra: Amber Valletta / Casey: Julie Ann Emery
/ Cressida: Robinne Lee / Geoff: Nathan Lee Graham / Ben: Michael Rapaport
/ Max: Adam Arkin |
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"I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox." -Woody Allen
Moreover,
a little secret about men is that most of us (you know you are out there) have
an enormously difficult time having confidence in themselves with members of the
opposite sex. I myself have been a
single and eligible chap for longer than I care to admit here.
I remember the last time I stirred up enough will power and assurance to
approach and ask out a girl that I was strongly attracted to. Well,
it did not really goes as planned and I felt like I did just about everything
conceivable to make it a rather unsuccessful woe.
Thoughts plagued my mind for days. Did
I wear the right clothes? Did I say
the right things? What did I do
wrong? More than
anything, I was thinking that if I only had a date doctor with ALL of the right
answers, then I would have been successful.
Well,
enter Alex Hitchens, aka Hitch (Will Smith) who is actually a date doctor for
hire. However, he’s not the kind of male chauvinist pig that
helps confident men try to score with other attractive women.
No, he is more interested in helping the everyman, the nice man, and the
kind of man that tries everything to be a success but ultimately fails
miserably. Hitch is not
intrinsically interested in setting up desperate men for one night stands;
rather, he is simply trying to get those nice men a date with some woman that
usually ignores them. The rest of
what happens after that is a further challenge that he willfully takes on.
Hitch’s
strategies may seem like age-old adages that appear perfunctory and redundant,
but many of them bare a great amount of credence.
For example, he advices one man in the beginning of the film that “Ninety percent of what you're saying isn't coming out of your
mouth.” In other words, it’s
not what you say to someone, but how you say it with your body
language. If you slouch, you reveal
a lack of care to your manner and appearance, not to mention confidence.
You can tell a woman how cute she is until the cows come home, but if you
can impress her without using words, than you are part of the way there.
Other strategies range from how to avoid costly mistakes in meeting
women, how to arrange successful “meet cutes”, not to mention kissing advice
for that all important period of the dating ritual where you drop a girl off at
home, walk her to the doorstep, and paralyzing awkwardness ensues. Hitch
himself knows a lot, but not because he was a natural born ladies man.
In fact, in a rather humorous flashback to his college years, he was kind
of one of those nerdy, impressionable, and perversely naïve young men that
thought he loved a woman after only a series of a few dates.
He loved once and when that went disastrously wrong, he turned his own
life around down towards the path of self-righteousness and poise.
He began to learn not by doing but by careful observation and ultimately
decides to enlist his help to those who lack success with the women of their
dreams. By becoming a date
consultant or doctor, Hitch gives hope to all the desperate and lonely saps out
there. And in the dog-eat-dog and
maliciously cutthroat world of contemporary New York, his services are, most
assuredly, needed in the most desperate ways.
Hitch
imparts his wisdom on what to do and not to do with women and seems to be
experiencing a great amount of business. One
young man seems to be the BIG challenge that he has waiting for.
He is Albert (played in a sweet and funny performance by KING OF KINGS’
Kevin James). Albert works for a big accounting firm who is longing for
that special someone. The problem
with him is his complete social ineptitude.
He is large, overweight, and lacking in even modest skills with women.
He’s one of those nice, loveable guys that is boisterous and modest,
but is always so clumsy that he seems to have some sort of liquid or food item
on his shirt or pants at any minute. In
a nutshell, Albert is fairly hopeless. To
complicate matters, he has managed to fall in love with the most unattainable
woman possible, even for men that are in a better position to win her affection. She is a rich, powerful, and beautiful millionaire named
Allegra (Amber Valletta). She is
the antithesis of Albert in every meaningful way, and conventional wisdom would
preclude that there is no way on earth that this gorgeous and intelligent woman
would date the sap that is Albert…or would she?
Well,
Hitch swoops in for the rescue and does everything he can to smooth over
Albert’s rough edges and then smooth over his rougher ones. To Albert, Hitch is a hero, instilling confidence in his
abilities to be able to have a chance with this woman (one of his platitudes is
“every gorgeous woman wants to be swept off her feet, it just depends on what
type of broom you use.").
Well, with some very skilful pointers, Albert manages to impress her
enough to secure a date with her. Well,
in a completely selfless act, he puts on a show of outrage at a meeting
regarding her finances and abruptly resigns.
Okay, maybe not the wisest thing to do, but his absolute conviction in
standing up for her scored huge points to win her favour.
She ultimately becomes touched by the fact that this man would do
so much just for her.
Well,
Hitch achieves the impossible by securing a date for Albert with the woman of
his dreams, all while still coaching him on the do’s and don’ts for his
future dates with her. There is one
very funny moment that reveals hidden and subtle truths about dancing (Hitch
tries ever so desperately to make Albert not look like a fool on the dance
floor), not to mention a sly and hilarious moment when he tries to teach Albert
how to kiss (come 90 per cent of the way and let her do the rest).
His advice is taken, and Albert becomes a relatively decent success with
the stunning Allegra. Hyperbole aside, Albert emerges as one of cinema’s great
recent heroes. If this hapless man
can get a date with the woman he’s dreamt of for a lifetime, then there’s
hope for all of us!
As
successful as things go for Albert, Hitch manages to find some romantic interest
for himself in the form of Sara (the striking Eva Mendes).
She works as a chief gossip columnist for a successful New York
publication who is equal parts cunning, confident, and nihilistic.
She is so luminous she would have no trouble at all having any man she
wanted, but she nevertheless chooses not to.
With Hitch’s first meeting with her he is instantly smitten, and his
charm and charisma work, but only to a fault.
You see, Sara makes Hitch work harder than he has ever had to, most
likely because she is smart, sassy, educated, and can spot pick up lines and
approaches from a mile away. She
appreciates Hitch’s advances, but is one step ahead of him at all times.
Amazingly, Hitch soon begins to realize that, wait a tick, he’s is
trying way to hard to be cool with this lady and, in the process, is coming off
as not cool. The two have
a series of first dates that reach a series of disasters that only Gaylord
Focker could empathize with. The
first one involves a very subtle and accidental misplacement of his foot with
damaging results, which is followed by an attempt to curb her affection that
only reduces her to tears of anguish. “I
saw that going differently in my mind,” Hitch drolly deadpans. A second date ends up for the worst for Hitch, who
unfortunately discovers that he has food allergies to fish, with hideous side
effects.
Just
in time for Valentine’s Day, HITCH works, for the most part, as being a
light-hearted, silly, and likeable comic romp that gets its laughs in surprising
ways. It’s not out to make us
giggle with bodily functions and gross out bathroom humor, but rather it’s an
appealing comedy by creating equally appealing characters.
The film is a textbook exercise is romantic comedy screenwriting 101,
where opposites attract; one finds out one’s secret, becomes angry and
distant, which consequently forces the other to work overtime to win her back.
Nothing about the story is new, and its predictability and pedestrian
nature are not really all that surprising.
Yet, the film works despite its obviousness because we invest in and like
nearly all of the characters. Hitch
is an amiable man who must come to grips with his own inevitable inadequacies,
and it’s refreshing to see Will Smith avoid another tired retread in the
action film genre. In HITCH he is
at his best, which means playing up to his natural comic talents.
Kevin James also creates another sympathetic figure in Albert, as does
Amber Valletta as Allegra, who sort of surprises us with just how soft and
sensitive of a woman she is. Sara
is a bit trickier to dissect. She
is obsessively attractive, but kind of socially klutzy and goofy, and Eva Mendes
with this film (on top of her fine work in STUCK ON YOU) reveals herself to be
really funny at light comedy. HITCH is ultimately successful because of the chemistry of all of the participants and the likeability of the stars themselves. It is a film that kind of meanders aimlessly at times and definitely is way too long for its own good (at two hours, comedies this light tend to wear out their welcome by the ninety minute mark), but it's still is a breezy and daft romantic comedy that had its laughs and heart in all the right places. Many have commented that this looks like a “chick flick”, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, it’s a modestly entertaining romance for couples to like, but its really a love letter to all of those down-on-their-luck men out there who want to sweep girls off their feet but feel that they are not empowered to do so. In this way, HITCH is therapy for the “nice guys” out there that feel disenfranchised by their lack of success with women. This film sort of supports the notions that anything is possible when you think its impossible or unattainable. |
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