Loser
**
Rated on a 4-star
scale
Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre)
Released in the UK by Columbia TriStar on November 3, 2000; certificate 12;
95 minutes; country of origin USA; aspect ratio 1.85:1
Directed by Amy Heckerling; produced by
Twink Caplan, Amy Heckerling.
Written by Amy Heckerling.
Photographed by Rob Hahn; edited by David
Chiate.
CAST.....
Jason Biggs..... Paul Tannek
Mena Suvari..... Dora Diamond
Greg Kinnear..... Professor Edward Alcott
Zak Orth..... Adam
Thomas Sadoski..... Chris
Jimmi Simpson..... Noah
Dan Aykroyd..... Mr Tannek
The problem with "Loser" -- unusual,
for a romantic comedy -- is not that it's clichéd, but that it relies
on cringeworthy implausibility. The hero is impossibly geeky, the people
and situations he finds himself around impossibly cruel, and after about,
oh, ten minutes, we just throw our hands up in the air and tune
out.
Jason Biggs stars as Paul, a small-town kid who
moves to New York City on a college scholarship. The guy's supposed to be
smart, but most of the time he's a clueless doofus who seems to have never
even seen a TV show about the big city. He constantly wears one of those
farmer's hats with floppy ears, causing someone to ask "Did the makers of
'Fargo' have a yard sale?" He attempts conversations with busy strangers.
He's pushover enough to let his roommates kick him out. He accepts a housing
reassignment in the spare room of an animal clinic. His chat-up lines include
"Here's some charcoal… so I can set a fire in your
heart!"
Mena Suvari is the female lead; her character
is a feisty English Lit student named Dora Diamond. When I tell you she's
dating a creep of a professor, and doesn't realise her feelings for Paul
until the closing scenes, you'll think that this is another one of those
movies where the girl ignores abundant evidence about her slimy boyfriend
and neither her nor her true love realise the obvious fact that they're attracted
to each other. But not so -- one of the things I liked about "Loser" was
how convincingly it depicts Dora trying to justify her relationship with
the older man, and how it shows her and Paul apart for most of the movie.
Most rom coms are a series of cute encounters between guy and gal -- this
one sees them as separate people, and they meet a finite amount of times,
and slowly form a connection… darn, it actually somewhat resembles the
way we really do fall in love!
But what am I doing defending the film? Sure,
it has good structural qualities, it's beautifully photographed, and the
actors do their best with the material -- but there's so much stupidity here.
Why, for example, does Paul go out of his way to cover up for the professor's
unkindness? And why are the only fun-loving people in the movie creeps? And,
I ask you, is there any place in a light-hearted comedy for date-rape drugs?
And should they be seen as a frivolous youthful indiscretion on the level
of sneaking a water mattress into a hall of residence??
COPYRIGHT© 2000 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
2000 Reviews
(alphabetical)
2000 Reviews (by star
rating)
Archive of all cinema reviews
(alphabetical)
Review Archive
Index
UK
Critic main page
|
![[Image]](http://www.ukcritic.com/posbanr2.gif)