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Review: Little Black Book
"This movie works hard to cram in every romantic comedy cliché imagineable, often for no apparent reason, while simultaneously trying to project the image of being a dark comedy."
By Reina Gonzales
While they’re often cheesy and almost always predictable, Romantic comedies can occasionally deliver that warm fuzzy feeling inside. Or at least a chuckle or two. The new film Little Black Book was cheesy, predictable, and did give me a fuzzy feeling inside, but unfortunately, that feeling was nausea. And my only chuckles came from laughing at the absurdity of the plot and the exceedingly witless dialogue.
Brittany Murphy stars as Stacey Holt, an aspiring television producer who idolizes Diane Sawyer and, gauging by her facial expression throughout the film, Dory the animated fish (of Finding Nemo fame). Stacey is thrilled when she lands a job as an associate producer for a pseudo-Springer daytime talk program, hosted by Kippie Kahn (Kathy Bates). When her boyfriend Derek (Office Space’s Ron Livingston) leaves town on business, he entrusts Stacey with house-and-dog-sitting. With her co-worker Barb (Holly Hunter) egging her on, Stacey begins snooping into Derek’s private life, tracking down ex-girlfriends and delving further and further into his little black book.
This movie works hard to cram in every romantic comedy cliché imagineable, often for no apparent reason, while simultaneously trying to project the image of being a dark comedy. We see grown women dancing around a room to horribly inappropriate Yanni-like muzak. We see Brittany Murphy lying on a bathroom floor in a skimpy t-shirt and panties belting out “Nobody Does It Better,” again with no justifiable reason. We also see characters blurting out dialogue completely unsuitable for their roles. In one case, the squarest guy in the whole movie: button-down, expressionless, painfully boring Ron Livingston actually utters the word “homey.”
The only bright spot and single character worth watching is Oscar award-winner Holly Hunter, in a similarly bad career move to Halle Berry’s appearance in Catwoman. Brittany Murphy, who was pleasantly naïve in Clueless, acts just plain dumb in this film, as if she were a graduate of the soap opera school of over-acting. Another Oscar-winning actress, Kathy Bates, makes a few brief and unremarkable appearances in the film, though the director probably did her a favor in that regard.
Another failure of this film is its contradictory messages about feminism. While virtually all the main characters are played by women in powerful roles, we also see Brittany Murphy hanging on her boyfriend’s every word and obeying his commands as he barks orders at her over the phone. A final word of warning: this movie’s ending may disappoint the only people it can possibly please: the die-hard romantic comedy junkies.
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