I'm still trying to work out how and indeed why this film was ever made. When will filmmakers understand that scripts featuring a variety of characters and hopefully a number of unifying themes are really difficult to pull off? Caffeine doesn't even come close to getting it right. To make matters worse as a comedy it is woefully unfunny to the point of painful.
In a nutshell, we're given access to a day in the 'zany' lives of the patrons and staff of the Black Cat Cafe. It's the usual stuff, someone's boyfriend has been cheating on them, someone's grandmother has gone doolally, someone else is waiting for a call from their agent, someone is on the blind date from hell when her ex turns up, someone else is revealed to be a transvestite. Someone turns out to be gay. Each story line plays out like a small sketch and appears to belong to a different film entirely as nothing seems to bind them together. Characters are so undeveloped it's impossible to work up anything approaching sympathy for them and their situations. Indeed characters like Tom the waiter don't even appear to have a back story. The fact it's set in London is incidental as apart from regular glimpses of the odd double decker bus and black cab, it could be anywhere. Even Rachel the owner of the cafe sounds northern.
Casting Katherine Heigel and Mena Suvari as Brits seems an odd decision as neither one had box office when this film was released and their attempts at the accent is woeful to say the least. Surely as London is known to be a cosmopolitan city it would have made more sense for them to be Americans? Sadly the basic idea is strong and in other hands Caffeine could have ended up being and entertaining and thought provoking rather than dull as ditch water.
In a nutshell, we're given access to a day in the 'zany' lives of the patrons and staff of the Black Cat Cafe. It's the usual stuff, someone's boyfriend has been cheating on them, someone's grandmother has gone doolally, someone else is waiting for a call from their agent, someone is on the blind date from hell when her ex turns up, someone else is revealed to be a transvestite. Someone turns out to be gay. Each story line plays out like a small sketch and appears to belong to a different film entirely as nothing seems to bind them together. Characters are so undeveloped it's impossible to work up anything approaching sympathy for them and their situations. Indeed characters like Tom the waiter don't even appear to have a back story. The fact it's set in London is incidental as apart from regular glimpses of the odd double decker bus and black cab, it could be anywhere. Even Rachel the owner of the cafe sounds northern.
Casting Katherine Heigel and Mena Suvari as Brits seems an odd decision as neither one had box office when this film was released and their attempts at the accent is woeful to say the least. Surely as London is known to be a cosmopolitan city it would have made more sense for them to be Americans? Sadly the basic idea is strong and in other hands Caffeine could have ended up being and entertaining and thought provoking rather than dull as ditch water.