Granted, I knew going in it had received mostly negative reviews.
RT sez:
An unlikable protagonist, messy editing, and gratuitous nudity might make audiences ask for their cash back.
Yet Roger Ebert was delighted by it, so I decided to give it a try.
Well, the "messy editing" rip I'd say is fair, on the grounds that if I notice...
As for the rest of what RT sez, well, I identified with the main character (named Ben, yet), the female lead I liked enormously, the storytelling was at a measured pace of the kind I appreciate.
As Ben, Sean Biggerstaff's (don't say it) acting is understated and belivable, but people who don't identify with artistic, romantic types may have a harder time latching onto the character than I did.
This Ben is an art student, who starts working a night shift at a local supermarket to combat insomnia after his girlfriend finishes with him.
Then he discovers he has the ability to stop time.
Or he may only fantasize that he has this ability. The movie isn't clear on the point, which is the first place it stumbles. But, we are certainly shown life from his point of view, (tho wandering POV is the film's second problem) as if he has this ability.
He uses this power in order to strip his female customers nude, sketch them, then redress them and start time.
Is this gratuitous? No, definitively not. One may not think the entire story is justifiable, but if you're going to tell it, then the nudity is necessary.
The way I see it, it's a fantasy every man (and for all I know more than a few women) has had, and it's presented here in a way that appeals to the more romantic side of it.
Ben finds himself drawn to one of his coworkers, Sharon. Although nothing is made of this, it seems to be a point of pride that he never uses his newfound (or fantasized) ability to see her in the altogether. Tho he makes hundreds of sketches of her face.
Her face, new to me, is that of Emilia Fox, who seems to be reasonably well-known in Britain, and is both from and married into acting families. She's strikingly lovely, and she rewards much of our attention...when the script bothers to remember that women are actual human beings who have existences apart from men.
More about that in a minute.
Trouble is, this movie doesn't have much more to say apart from the fact that naked girls are fantastic. Which is utterly, inarguably true, but it's useless as a launching pad for the tepid romantic comedy this turns into, rather than remaining an examination of beauty.
There's at least a couple of places where I thought the film was going to make a point, however lightly. I'd hoped it would be something about the difference between the way Ben's laddish friends and coworkers look at strippers and the loving care he takes with his "subjects." However unwitting they may be.
What we get instead is him visiting a strip club, not entirely willingly, but finding himself imagining Sharon doing a pole dance.
Unfortunately, director/writer Sean Ellis falls into the traditional trap of male writers writing women characters: Most of them seem to exist only to serve the needs either of the protagonist (making it a male fantasy in more ways than one), or the plot.
And when those two needs clash...God, this movie becomes aggravating.
In some ways, it could have been made for me. There's even the use of a Frankie Goes To Hollywood song at a charged moment. Yet again and again it stumbles and falls, for me most irreparably in that charged moment.
We are asked to believe one of these characters would behave in a way which nothing that has gone before has led us to believe they would behave. It's the obligatory "boy loses girl" moment, and one of the worst I've ever seen.
It's as if director/writer Sean Ellis doesn't know how likable his characters are, when he's shown them to us as funny, humorous, and smart, and thinks we won't notice when a plot peg depends on them forgetting it.
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