I Could Never Be Your Woman | Christian Toto saw, Romance | Coming Soon!!
I Could Never Be Your Woman
February/23/08 07:55 PM Filed in: Christian Toto
saw | Romance
Matters get worse once our story begins.
Older but still stunning Rosie (Michelle Pfeiffer) is trying to juggle being a single mom for daughter Izzie ("Atonement's" Saoirse Ronan) with working as a sitcom producer. We're instantly bombarded with Important Themes, like discrimination against older women, body issues and the shallowness of pop culture.
Writer/director Amy Heckerling of "Clueless" fame has her anger aimed in the right places, but her screenplay suffocates her intentions.
Thankfully, the talking points retreat when Rosie's sitcom adds Adam (Paul Rudd) to the cast. He's an instant hit with the aging show, and with Rosie as well. He flirts baldy with her, as only the engaging Rudd can, and soon they start dating.
But the age thing gets in the way. He's 29. She's … well, she tells him she's 37, then 38 … and then 40, but she's still not being honest.
It's hard to feel sympathy for our 40-something heroine when she's got the face - and figure - of a radiant Pfeiffer. But the actress still makes her character's inadequacies real all the same.
It's a clear sign of our culture's gender imbalance that a 40-something woman dating a man 15 years younger is considered a shock. If Jack Nicholson were to woo a woman on screen who isn't at least two decades his junior we might riot in the streets.
The 2003 film "Something's Gotta Give" shares more with "Woman" than just an eerily similar movie poster. Both were conceived by 50-something women feeling the pressure of growing older in an industry which respects miniskirts over maturity.
While "Give" featured a crackerjack script and Oscar-worthy performances, "Woman" is merely a trifle, Bonus points are given for the Pfeiffer-Rudd chemistry, a few great zingers and a cheeky cameo by Henry Winkler.
And young Saoirse, adopting a perfect American accent, is clearly a star of tomorrow.
But the film loses interest in the Rosie-Adam romance and, as a result, so do we.
Clearly, Heckerling has an arsenal of axes to grind. But while that kind of blacksmithing may be fine for a blog, it makes for one conflicted movie.
Still, "Woman" is superior to some rom-com bombs dropping on theaters these days, which makes its video-only release a head scratcher.
1. The goods: "I Could Never Be Your Woman" is first and foremost a novelty, a star-laden comedy which went straight to video like so many "American Pie" sequels.
2. The Mandatory Extras: Pretty slim. We get three deleted scenes, a theatrical trailer for a film that never made it to any theaters, and a commentary track with Heckerling and producer Cerise Hallam Larkin. Two of the deleted scenes are throwaways, but the third is a tough sequence in which young Izzie tells her mother about how her girlfriends provide oral services to their boyfriends, much to Rosie's consternation.
The commentary track is by-the-book banter, with Heckerling and Larkin discussing how the film was shot in England but was meant to convey L.A. They also sing the praises, and rightly so, of young Saoirse Ronan, and share how they used digital equipment to tweak the film's colorful appearance.
— Christian Toto