Will Smith is perhaps the most dependable of the Hollywood stars. He can deliver an audience virtually regardless of the type of film he appears in. Sci-fi, action, comedy, drama, whatever. The guy is an audience magnet. So it came as no real surprise that Hitch was a big hit in theaters. It was almost a good movie as well.
Smith plays Alex Hitchens, a consultant who specializes in teaching men how to meet the women of their dreams and navigate enough dates to develop a real relationship. To this end he gives out tons of advice, most of it seemingly useful. Simple stuff like recommending guys actually listen to what a woman has to say, not staring at her chest and how to handle the first kiss. Hitch is not promising wild sex or anything like that. He only takes clients who want relationships; nobody who holds with the “fuck and chuck” lifestyle is accepted. He had a bad relationship in the past and is trying to use what he learned to teach others to have better luck.
So basically, Hitch is a good guy. He’s funny, helpful and pretty well off. It’s the sort of character that could come off as pretty dodgy if they didn’t make such a big deal about his decency. It also helps to have him played by Will Smith, who can draw from deep wells of likeability to make the character work.
What goes wrong is that he falls for a gossip columnist, played by Eva Mendes. Now you have to wonder if it makes a lot of sense for a guy who is very picky about both his clientele and his low profile to make an effort to date someone in that line of work. To date someone whose very job is to print unsubstantiated rumors for everyone in New York City to read seems like career suicide. So when it actually turns out to be career suicide, I wasn’t particularly shocked. That’s the problem with this movie, it comes up with characters we like, steers them into bad situations any idiot could see coming and then has come up with ridiculous maneuvering to get them to a very false happy ending. Apart from bad chemistry, nothing wrecks a romantic comedy for me like a forced happy ending. Clearly writer Kevin Bisch found himself in a corner after two acts and didn’t have any idea how to get back out. So a third act was tacked on that made pretty much no sense and makes me want my money back.
Kevin James deserves a lot of credit for stealing pretty much all of his scenes from Smith. I’m not sure he qualifies as a great comedic actor but he can clearly handle this sort of role with style.
Director Andy Tennant did a great job shooting the movie, it looks great and uses New York to great advantage as a setting. Had he just finished the script as smartly as it opened, we’d be talking about a great little flick. So call Will Smith the celebrity equivalent of spackle; he’s used to cover up all the holes the builders left.
- This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it can’t dance half as well as Kevin James.
