The main reason I watched this movie was to see Sandra Bullock, and it's interesting to see this performance from early in her career. She's always been one of my favorite actresses and even in this less than stellar movie, sparks of her future greatness shone through. Without her in it, this movie would have been utterly forgettable. Sadly, she was badly underutilized in this film, which seemed to be mainly Tate Donovan's vehicle. It was like watching an early film with Marylin Monroe and some forgettable, no-name costar, and having the movie mainly focus on the co-star instead of Marilyn.
The plot of this film was weird and even cringy at times. Cringe elements I found especially hard to stomach included the weird relationship between Sandra Bullock's character Diane and the scumbag Gary, who just used her for convenient sex, the romp at the sorority house by Paul while he was on the love potion, and the scheming prostitute who used the love potion to steal stuff from Paul and other men. I guess I could overlook the cringe elements if the relationship between Paul and Diane had been really compelling. Unfortunately, this relationship was drastically underdeveloped. They used the cheater's way of presenting a montage of their budding relationship, rather than actually developing it with dialog and character interaction. You have maybe 10 minutes of the movie devoted to their relationship and the rest after that devoted to Paul's weird efforts to try to win Diane back and the scheming machinations of the prostitute Marisa. It was as if the creators of this movie wanted to do a rom-com with as little real romance as possible, and fill the rest with supposedly-funny hijinks. It just didn't work for me.
So, if you are watching this movie in hopes of seeing a satisfying rom-com from the golden age of rom-coms, you will be sadly disappointed. If you watch this in hopes of seeing a great performance by Sandra Bullock early in her career, you will, likewise, be disappointed. More than one time, I was tempted to shut off this movie because of the pure cringe that I saw on the screen, but I stuck it out till the end. Sadly, I was not rewarded for doing so. The movie only got worse as it went along, not better.
The plot of this film was weird and even cringy at times. Cringe elements I found especially hard to stomach included the weird relationship between Sandra Bullock's character Diane and the scumbag Gary, who just used her for convenient sex, the romp at the sorority house by Paul while he was on the love potion, and the scheming prostitute who used the love potion to steal stuff from Paul and other men. I guess I could overlook the cringe elements if the relationship between Paul and Diane had been really compelling. Unfortunately, this relationship was drastically underdeveloped. They used the cheater's way of presenting a montage of their budding relationship, rather than actually developing it with dialog and character interaction. You have maybe 10 minutes of the movie devoted to their relationship and the rest after that devoted to Paul's weird efforts to try to win Diane back and the scheming machinations of the prostitute Marisa. It was as if the creators of this movie wanted to do a rom-com with as little real romance as possible, and fill the rest with supposedly-funny hijinks. It just didn't work for me.
So, if you are watching this movie in hopes of seeing a satisfying rom-com from the golden age of rom-coms, you will be sadly disappointed. If you watch this in hopes of seeing a great performance by Sandra Bullock early in her career, you will, likewise, be disappointed. More than one time, I was tempted to shut off this movie because of the pure cringe that I saw on the screen, but I stuck it out till the end. Sadly, I was not rewarded for doing so. The movie only got worse as it went along, not better.