Sunday 22 January 2023

I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007 Amy Heckerling & scr)

"A desperately unfunny mix of tepid showbiz satire and formulaic romantic comedy, writer-director Amy Heckerling's long-delayed, trouble-plagued "I Could Never Be Your Woman" finally has been released -- or, more precisely, unleashed -- as a direct-to-video title." This is how the Variety review begins - I so disagree. But it doesn't help to understand what troubled this follow-up to the massively successful Clueless, with which it shares several cast members. Nor does it explain why it was made in England.

So. Over to an 'EW' article ('Entertainment Weekly'?)  The idea came to her when she was making the Clueless TV series whilst bringing up a teenaged daughter, and thinking there's no fair representation of older women in this type of scenario. The film originally was to be made at Paramount but they had cold feet, and independent Bauer Martinez stepped in, filming in the UK for tax reasons. Then the film ran into difficulties over Pfeiffer's share of gross and that the inexperienced Martinez had already sold the DVD rights, so it never ended up with a theatrical release and didn't see the light of day until two years after it was completed.

It's fresh and funny and contains plenty of pot shots against the industry, and - as I believe I've mentioned before - Saoirse's song send-ups are hilarious.

With Michelle Pfeiffer: Paul Rudd, Saoirse (her film debut), Stacey Dash, Fred Willard (Modern Family), Sarah Alexander, Tracey Ullman, Yasmin Paige (by no means her debut), David Mitchell (a rare film appearance), Graham Norton, OT Fagbenle, Steve Pemberton, blink-and-you'll-miss-her Olivia Colman.





No comments:

Post a Comment