Film review – Conrad – 23/10/97
“Baby, you’re money, you are money”. So Trent (Vince Vaughn) tries to convince his friend Mike (Jon Favreau, first seen here in New Zealand as Monica’s millionaire boyfriend in ‘Friends’) that he is capable of re-entering the dating scene. Mike’s transition from a love torn loser trying to get over the girlfriend he left back East (New York), to a confident participant in the singles scene of Los Angeles’ bars and clubs, is the basic plot line. However it’s a journey which entertains in the most unexpected ways.
The film is more dialogue than plot driven. In fact Mike gets to be a bit irritating after a while in his self pity, but it’s as much a case of convincing acting, highlighted by the scene where, in his first tentative steps back into the singles scene, he manages to begin and end a relationship with a series of messages he leaves on a woman’s answering machine. It was at once cringeworthy, tragic and funny.
Elsewhere Mike, Vince and their friends cruise parties, clubs and bars, checking out the action, and educating Mike in the nuances of dating, such as how many days to wait before calling a woman who has given up the hard won prize of her phone number. All of this is set to a backdrop of lounge music, crooners and even some rock’n’roll, plus there is a nod to film-making in a great take on Tarantino’s ‘Reservoir Dogs’.
Favreau wrote the screenplay in a semi-autobiographical way, as an actor struggling to find a career in LA. He even wrote his friend Vince into the story, and much of the dialogue was based on their way of talking to each other and their friends. The story behind the making of this movie is a classic case of two guys with a screenplay doing the rounds of producers, and finally ending up shooting it on a budget (US$200,000) worthy of the catering bill for a week on a so-called blockbuster.
With the fresh approach of first time director (Doug Liman), and a shooting schedule which meant using the real LA clubs and bars which feature, the end result is a realistic, funny, and fresh movie which belies the budget behind it and deserves the run away success it has had in the States.
