|
| • Advanced Search • Help |
Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! (Full Screen Edition) | Year: 2004 Classification: Comedy Directed: - Robert Luketic Actors/Actresses: - Kate Bosworth - Topher Grace - Josh Duhamel Ditch This Date After seeing a small ad for the frothy "Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!" and getting tickets to a special sneak preview, I was honestly looking forward to it. It stars some of Hollywood's newer and popular actors who starred in such films as "Blue Crush", "Traffic" and "Mona Lisa Smile", is directed by Robert Luketic, who has last summer's smash "Legally Blonde" to his credit, and is produced by Douglas Wick, who produced 2000's Best Picture "Gladiator". Plus, it's a romantic comedy, and I thought it would be a good choice for a night out with the girls. Unfortunately, it is none of these things, and is so poorly scripted that it's almost laughable. "Win A Date...", follows the story of Rosalee Futch (Kate Bosworth), a clerk at the local Piggly Wiggly mart in a small town in West Virginia, who along with her quirky friend and co-worker Cathy (Ginnifer Goodwin), dreams of meeting her movie star crush, heartthrob Tad Hamilton (Josh Duhamel). However, contrary to the image portrayed in his films, Hamilton is really the token Hollywood bad-boy, and after one too many scandals within the press, his agent and his manager decide to go to drastic measures to repair his image: release a nationwide contest to fly to California and go out on a date with the movie star, with all proceeds going to Tad's favorite charity. But, to Rosalee in West Virginia, it seems too good to be true when the nationwide contest is announced. Not long after she enters on a whim, she miraculously wins, much to the excitement of Cathy, and the dismay of her long-time friend and boss Pete (Topher Grace), who is secretly and desperately in love with her. In my opinion, "Win A Date With Tad Hamilton!" is one of those self-proclaimed romantic comedies that is an insult to the genre. Its plot, while interesting for around the first 15 minutes, begins taking odd, clumsy turns, with characters abandoning traits and opinions left and right that were established early on in the movie, just to keep the plot moving. The script, while having some funny moments mostly carried by Topher Grace, is poor, almost as if the writers started pulling plot twists out of a hat after running out of ideas as to where to take the film. Performance wise, Topher Grace and Ginnifer Goodwin are really the only highlights with their quirky sense of humor and physical comedy, but even then, the portrayals grow tiring and repetitive. In a bizarre choice, Tad Hamilton's manager (Sean Hayes) and agent (Nathan Lane) are both named Richard Levy, and sadly, both of their talents are wasted within their pointless and annoying characters. Kate Bosworth is reasonably likeable, given the sense of the writing, but she is a bit bland, like much of the cast. Overall, this movie has some amusing scenes and a good soundtrack, but in the end, the script is just too corny and clumsy to do romantic comedies as a whole proud. Cute and Funny I can think of a bunch of reasons for not liking this movie. In spite of all those reasons, I like it. It was cutesy and a bit cliche, and yet, it was funny and generally well done. I should mention that Kate Bosworth steals the show. I could not keep from watching her. She has a lot of potential for much more serious roles. She reminds me of Sally Fields when she was a teenager. The story is vaguely familiar. The sweet girl in a rural West Virginia town thinks Tad Hamilton the actor is the greatest person on earth, not realizing that someone close to her is deeply in love with her. When she wins a contest to go to Hollywood to date Tad, she is ecstatic. This story could have ended here, but Tad is taken with Rosalee Futch (Bosworth) and pursues her back to West Virginia. The guy who has been in love with her most of his life, Pete Monash (Topher Grace), does not believe he can compete with Tad, though he does try. While the ending has some predictability, it also has some surprises. One feature that crops up several times in this movie is a certain amount of cynicism and sarcasm. As one example, the scene near the end of the movie between Pete and Rosalee is nearly identical to an earlier Tad Hamilton film. Sometimes the cynicism is equivalent to a baseball bat to the head, and other times it is very subtle. You have to watch the movie a couple of times, and even then I may still have missed much of the cynicism. Another feature of this DVD are the extras. The gag reel is pretty good, but I also liked the deleted scenes as well. There are a lot more extras than what is listed in Amazon, but the deleted scenes and gag reel are the best. A couple are incredibly hilarious. I was told that Paris Hilton is the blond woman in a couple of scenes, but I do not know for sure because I am unfamiliar with her appearance. Good light entertainment with quite a bit of humor, and manages to keep from being overly maudlin. I like it enough that I'll watch it again. Cute, fun, extra point for cutting all Paris Hilton scenes Like others, I was surprised at how much I liked this movie (probably had a lot to do with how cute Kate Bosworth is in it). It has its flaws (the depth of the relationship between Bosworth's character and Pete isn't explored enough) but it succeeds well as a romantic comedy with a nice message to it. If you watch the extras you'll notice that all Paris Hilton's scenes were deleted (or at least I didn't notice any that remained). I give the movie extra points for this! Buy Win A Date With Tad Hamilton at Amazon.com Buy posters at Allposters.com Jamster - the latest ringtones for your phone!  Search with Walhello on the Internet on Win A Date With Tad Hamilton Search with the Priority Search Engine on Win A Date With Tad Hamilton This page in other languages: Suomeksi | Nederlands | Deutsch
|
