I rarely ever watch rom-coms, but something drew me to this film. I saw the trailer on another site and pretty much had it saved in my memory bank and counted down the days till the release. I guess I kinda got my days wrong cos I told myself it was out on the 15th march when it was out on 12th march.
Anyway, on to the review...what did I like about it? For people not in the same room, Robinne Lee (Erica) and Sam Jaeger (Kyle) were brilliant together. Their conversation was moving, fun and flirty. The moment when Kyle overhears the low-self esteem-y conversation that Erica was having with her boyfriend was heartbreaking and well acted by Robinne Lee. It takes their relationship to a whole new place.
It is laugh out loud funny. The dog poop, the potato shredder, the cereal lady...only there for a brief moment, but you get such a good sense of their character and you feel Erica's frustration with them.
Why 8 out of 10 stars? Why does a woman who talks to strangers on the phone everyday for a living feel the need to talk to even more strangers? To be fair, this doesn't ruin our enjoyment of the film one bit. Mostly because her miss dials are interesting, heartwarming and the characters at the other end of the line were believable. Some place here is a soldier just back from tour who could do with that kind of call or a lady with her kids grown, out of the house with an empty house all to herself and feeling alone. Her blowing off work provided a bit of tension, anytime she spent too much time on her miss dial calls, I wanted to scream, "get back to work! you are going to be fired!!!!" I thought the end scene when they meet each other for the first time and shake hands went on for a tiny bit too long.
All in all, it is a great feel good movie held together by strong writing and actors. For this to work the calls had to be ridiculous, over the top, funny, frustrating, uplifting, baffling....annoying...and they were all that and more. I thought was going to watch it in two halfs, but ended up staying up late to finish the whole thing. I'll be watching again and buying on DVD if a PAL version is ever released.
Anyway, on to the review...what did I like about it? For people not in the same room, Robinne Lee (Erica) and Sam Jaeger (Kyle) were brilliant together. Their conversation was moving, fun and flirty. The moment when Kyle overhears the low-self esteem-y conversation that Erica was having with her boyfriend was heartbreaking and well acted by Robinne Lee. It takes their relationship to a whole new place.
It is laugh out loud funny. The dog poop, the potato shredder, the cereal lady...only there for a brief moment, but you get such a good sense of their character and you feel Erica's frustration with them.
Why 8 out of 10 stars? Why does a woman who talks to strangers on the phone everyday for a living feel the need to talk to even more strangers? To be fair, this doesn't ruin our enjoyment of the film one bit. Mostly because her miss dials are interesting, heartwarming and the characters at the other end of the line were believable. Some place here is a soldier just back from tour who could do with that kind of call or a lady with her kids grown, out of the house with an empty house all to herself and feeling alone. Her blowing off work provided a bit of tension, anytime she spent too much time on her miss dial calls, I wanted to scream, "get back to work! you are going to be fired!!!!" I thought the end scene when they meet each other for the first time and shake hands went on for a tiny bit too long.
All in all, it is a great feel good movie held together by strong writing and actors. For this to work the calls had to be ridiculous, over the top, funny, frustrating, uplifting, baffling....annoying...and they were all that and more. I thought was going to watch it in two halfs, but ended up staying up late to finish the whole thing. I'll be watching again and buying on DVD if a PAL version is ever released.