Saturday, March 12, 2011

1532 - Loser

I remember seeing this trailer in high school and wanting to see the film.  This was in the wake of American Pie and so these two actors, Mena Suvari and Jason Biggs were pretty hot shit at the time - now I had to google them to see what they'd been up to.
This film is more or less a rip-off of The Apartment, in that it's the story of a guy who lets himself get taken advantage of and watches the girl he's falling in love with be treated horribly by another man.  I'm sure if you beat out both stories you'd find it's almost an exact replica in terms of story mechanics.  And given that The Apartment is a hands-down fantastic film, you'd think that this film would be great as well.  Not so much.
For being a comedy I don't think I really laughed once.  Biggs and Suvari are fine here - but I have a hard time trying to figure out what the tone of the film is - it dips in and out of different kinds of comedy and never really makes any of them work.  It's not a horrible film, it's just a really really weak one - especially considering that it comes from Amy Heckerling.  And for some unknown reason it's full of cameos like Dan Akroyd and David Spade (and we get a glimpse of Alan Cummings playing Emcee in Cabaret!)
The only reason I could recommend it is if you live in Toronto and want to make a drinking game out of how many times the location they're in is so obviously Toronto and not New York.  Outside of that there are far better films you could be watching.
Loser

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