The klutzy yet stunning Rebecca Sommers walks in on her hunky boyfriend in bed with another woman. They break up and Rebecca starts to fall apart, but, with the help of her close girlfriends, she begins to date again. Unfortunately, the men she meets all happen to be crazy. John, her dorky guy friend, tries to express his secret love for Rebecca, but she's too busy to notice as she tries to come to terms with her breakup.
09 Feb Dirty Love (2005)
Ventriloquism for Dummies
What an entertaining movie!
I share the critical consensus, that it is poorly made and a failure in all its intended dimensions. But I watch movies a different way, and that allows me to get a lot out of it. In this case, it matters that this is Jenny McCarthy‘s project.
If you do not know her, she was a nude model with artificial breasts who achieved the golden prize, the ‘Playmate of the Year.‘ She was able to create a marketable persona as a loveable ditz. Later, she would become a spokesperson for one of the more dangerous ignorant memes; that vaccines caused her son‘s autism. What is salient here is that she is a dumb model with an act like the early Goldie Hawn and who married a filmmaker.
She gets enough leverage to make her own movie. This was written by her; she plays the main role and her husband directs. So what is it about? Both sides of her: a vacuous supermodel who has no understanding of ‘real love‘ and who spends the movie involved in embarrassing his hapless lover. She physically plays that target, who is a photographer like her husband..
Among the embarrassments we are supposed to find comedic: her jilted tantrums; being vomited on; publicly slipping in a pool of her menstrual blood; having her breasts exposed in public; volunteering for casual sex with a couple losers; any number of silly ‘girl talk‘ episodes; an extended drugtaking sequence and the final wrapup (where she finds her true love) triggered by a ridiculous belief in fortunetelling.
To emphasise the embarrassments, we have two on-screen observers in her roommates, also extreme stereotypes. One, played by Kam Heskin, is actually effective because it finds the comedic balance Jenny misses.
So, the fold here is simple: a woman‘s real life, exploited by her. It is supposed to leverage a dumb blond stereotype on screen and fails, but succeeds if you know that the created it herself.
Posted in 2011
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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