Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Movie Review: Little Black Book

The cover of the movie makes it look like it will be a romantic comedy. But instead it is a little dark and satirical. It's about a woman whose dream is to work with Diane Sawyer. But to get to the top, she has to start out at the bottom. And the bottom is a sleazy, sensationalistic daytime talk show called The Kippie Kan Show. She starts interviewing her boyfriend's old girlfriends (his palm pilot substituting for the eponymous little black book) under the pretension that they're going to be featured on the Kippie Kan Show.

My verdict: The main star, Brittany Murphy (who died under unusual circumstances in 2009 [1]), wasn't a very good actress. Her face perpetually has a look of "Really?" on it and her voice always has the same inflection. I think they chose her simply because she has big brown eyes. And perhaps for her legs, since she spends an inordinate amount of screen time in her panties. Holly Hunter (probably familiar to most as the voice of Elastigirl on Pixar's The Incredibles) did an alright job acting, but her character was implausible. Her implosion of The Kippie Kan Show is brilliant and completely out of character for the drifter, jack-of-all-trades that she is. In fact, the only acting job that I thought was commendable was by Julianne Nicholson. The frequent homages to Carly Simon and her music didn't make any sense in the context of the movie. Simon's appearance at the end was awkward—especially since she bears a strong resemblance to Steve Tyler. (Or is it the other way around?) Overall, this movie wasn't worth watching.


Notes:

[1] Five months later her husband died under nearly identical conditions. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittany Murphy#Death.

Image attributions:

PDA is by Ian Britton, available at http://www.freefoto.com/preview/04-12-24/PDA-Cell-Phone. 

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