My main reasons for not liking this movie other than it's messy and convoluted plot (American women raised in England with English parents but no accents) and the quickie, unrealistic romance, was the sorely lacking background information and character development of the two leads.
I mean, the movie actually starts with Kat(Debra Messing) sending male escort, Nick(Dermot Mulroney) his plane ticket via bike messenger. We don't know anything about Kat as a person. Why would a beautiful looking woman like Kat be desperate enough to hire a $6000 escort just to make her ex-boyfriend jealous? Why not ask a male friend or co-worker and just pay for the plane ticket? If the movie started out this way, at least the audience sees that A)her and the guy have somewhat of a history and a connection and B)we can see inside her head a little. Also, her low self-esteem and neurotic nature was really annoying. Sometimes a neurotic character is really funny and kinda cute, i.e. Diane Keaton, but Kat was just sad and pathetic. Why in God's name would Nick all of a sudden find her attractive when she was barely tolerable on a social level? And about Nick... we should have seen some sort of back story as to why he wants to leave the escort business. This would have given his character a little more depth and humanized him. The whole time, I really couldn't look past the fact that he was just an escort and 95% of he and Kat's time together was almost exclusively about their business arrangement.
I think the key to a great romantic movie is not just the characters falling for each other, but we as the audience have to fall in love with them too. I barely knew these two, so why would I automatically believe in their "love at first sight" moment? By the end of the movie, I couldn't have cared less and that's really bad movie making.
I mean, the movie actually starts with Kat(Debra Messing) sending male escort, Nick(Dermot Mulroney) his plane ticket via bike messenger. We don't know anything about Kat as a person. Why would a beautiful looking woman like Kat be desperate enough to hire a $6000 escort just to make her ex-boyfriend jealous? Why not ask a male friend or co-worker and just pay for the plane ticket? If the movie started out this way, at least the audience sees that A)her and the guy have somewhat of a history and a connection and B)we can see inside her head a little. Also, her low self-esteem and neurotic nature was really annoying. Sometimes a neurotic character is really funny and kinda cute, i.e. Diane Keaton, but Kat was just sad and pathetic. Why in God's name would Nick all of a sudden find her attractive when she was barely tolerable on a social level? And about Nick... we should have seen some sort of back story as to why he wants to leave the escort business. This would have given his character a little more depth and humanized him. The whole time, I really couldn't look past the fact that he was just an escort and 95% of he and Kat's time together was almost exclusively about their business arrangement.
I think the key to a great romantic movie is not just the characters falling for each other, but we as the audience have to fall in love with them too. I barely knew these two, so why would I automatically believe in their "love at first sight" moment? By the end of the movie, I couldn't have cared less and that's really bad movie making.