Hitch-Cyrano de Bergerac In the 21st Century
Most of the date movies produced by the Hollywood cookie cutter machine are truly dreadful pieces of work. Viewed through that lens one has to give a pass of “tolerable” to Hitch. I can’t say that I enjoyed the film, but with so many “comedy” oriented date movies being produced, I have to give this film decent marks under the umbrella of its genre.
When compared to such soul crushing, wrist slashing experiences as My Big Fat Greek Con Job, What Women Want or You’ve Got Mail, Hitch is a pleasant romp through a field of flowers and it is raining gently floating gold coins.
Will Smith does a fine job playing Alex a.k.a. Hitch, who is a “love-doctor” that can give “game” to the “gameless”, sex to the sexless, groove to the grooveless...you get the point. Rather predictably Hitch is coaching a fat clueless white guy named Albert, played by Kevin James, the fat clueless white guy from the remarkably painful television show King of Queens, it’s a real acting stretch for James. They toss him in a suit and pretend he is actually acting like a different character. He’s not. Albert (James) has a crush on a woman so far out of his league that it makes the Portia de Rossi/ Elleen DeGeneres thing seem look good match making or the whole Ric Ocasek and any super model thing look logical (I threw that in so no one would think I was picking on lesbians, because I’m not as I could care less). Also predictably, the normally smooth Hitch falls for a woman, Sara played by Eva Mendes, and is completely awkward around her, as he has found love, etc. As I stated pretty predictable stuff. But the film works overall because there are some funny moments, the acting is decent enough and, again, when viewed through the Hollywood produced date lense, it is less painful than other options.
Hitch, perplexing as this may be, cost a bizarrely silly $60-70 million dollars, which is completely unreasonable for a film of this type and serves as an excellent example of how production cost in the entertainment industry are reaching a comical level. Yes, I am a broken record on this subject, but what can I do? Even after paying Smith $20 million dollars there is no way this film warrants a $40 or $50 million dollar tab. Folks are lining their pockets left and right, there’s no way around it.
This massive price tag is made particularly evident and painful by the lack luster directing style of Andy Tennant. Again, naughty-naughty Hollywood, too much money on this one. Pure and simple. But the film raked in a over $250 million on a $60-70 million dollar budget, so we will probably see Hitch 2. The film’s success is fairly straight-forward: the star power of Will Smith is by far the largest component of the film’s success and the second factor is that it was a well-timed date movie release.
A third factor in Hitch’s success centers on some sneaky doings on the part of Hollywood executives. You don’t have to look very hard to see that Hitch is really just an elaborate reworking and retooling of Cyrano de Bergerac. Bare minimum Hitch’s inspiration can be found in this very familiar work and would strike a cord of familiarity as such.
Frequent readers, know that I am constantly pointing to Hollywood’s love of movies based on television shows, sequels, movies based on books or films based upon stories that audiences are already familiar with from history or pop culture. It happens constantly, Troy, Planet of the Apes, the James Bond films, you get the point. This familiarity can come from anywhere, just so long as the average Joe already knows the story. Why? It is complex but one key reason is that it allows the advertising people and studio executives to be very lazy and snort more coke off the bums of prostitutes and mistresses instead of doing icky work. Too harsh, maybe, so what, its true more than you think.
So if you must rent a date movie to impress a girl/woman/man who likes these kind of movies, I guess to be open minded and all, then, trust me you could do way worse than this film. Hitch fills the void it was created to fill.
Story C+
Acting B+ (Smith and Mendes are good together, but god could I do without this James character who, if he has range, is not being allowed to show any of it.)
Visuals C- (Andy Tennant comes close to dropping the ball on this one as the directing is quite dull and the script needed to be punched up a bit visually.)
Originality/Innovation C (Basically, when you cut through all the trappings and window dressing this is essentially a reworking of Cyrano de Bergerac, which has been made before.)
Enjoyability Grade C+
Home Theater/HD Factor C
Overall Grade C+
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