Ep 35: Hitch

Jenny and Lucy get enthusiastic about Albert and Allegra, grouchy about Hitch and Sarah (it takes a really bad movie to neutralize Will Smith’s charm), and outraged over the exploitation of romcom cliches.  Lord, it wasn’t good.

Get the podcast: [Listen here at PopD] | [Go to iTunes]

Story Analysis & Ratings:

Lucy says: 3 Pops ~ I adored Albert and Allegra, wanted to hold Hitch and Sara under the waters of the Hudson until they stopped being afraid to love. A wonderful secondary romance smothered by a terrible primary romance. Although I still adore Will Smith.

Lucy’s rating breakdown: Structure: 2, Comedy: 4, Romance: 3

Jenny says: 3 Pops ~ Albert and Allegra rule, everything else drools.  Just fast forward until you see Kevin James.  Kevin James with Will Smith, Kevin James with Amber Valleta, Kevin James dancing in the street.

Jenny’s rating breakdown: Structure: 2, Comedy: 4, Romance: 3 (an average of the 1 for Hitch and Sarah and the 5 for Albert and Allegra)

Blog Poll Rating: TBD

Read the chat transcript.

Movie Info:

Story: While helping his latest client woo the fine lady of his dreams, a professional “date doctor” finds that his game doesn’t quite work on the gossip columnist with whom he’s smitten.

Release Date: Feb. 11, 2005

Writer: Kevin Bisch

Jenny

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23 responses to “Ep 35: Hitch”

  3. I really don’t like Kevin James in movie, but this movie is the exception. I also hate the Ellis crying scene for Eva Mendes’ crying- totally threw me off.

  4. Just listened to the podcast and feel sort of compelled to defend Jerry Maguire by pointing out that the Kenny Chesney song was inspired by Renee Zellweger’s line in the movie. Other than that, agree with everything you said. Albert and Allegra are fantastic.

  5. This was fun, and I learned two great new terms from the chat and subsequent podcast:

    – Anvilicious

    – Douchbag Hair

    Great stuff!!!

  6. I could have sworn that was a line in an older country song, pre-Chesney. Not a title. Can’t find it now so maybe not.

  7. I am sure you have read a romance novel where the secondary romance is WAY more interesting than the main romance. That was totally true for this movie. I wonder if this happens because there is less at stake with the secondary romance. The writer is freer with the secondary characters as opposed to sticking with convention when creating the main characters.

    I am still laughing about the douche bag hair. I am going to keep my eyes open for douche bag hair this week. I wonder how many examples I will find. Thanks for that one!

  9. I watched the special features and noticed a couple of things.
    1. The original title was “The Last First Kiss”. Such a better title and gives me hope that there was a script that involved a love doctor and then they signed Will Smith and needed to promote the ‘talent’ and changed the plot and the title.
    2. They had a therapist/ couples counselor go through the script with them so that they would make sure that the guys were actually doing ‘guy’ stuff and the women were actually doing ‘girl’ stuff. She seemed to think they succeeded.
    They may have but clearly no one was checking to see if the story actually made sense or if anyone would be invested in the main characters.

  10. Yep, that movie looks awful.
    OTOH, I just watched Red last night and it was wonderful. Maybe it’s just the wedding theme that makes movies awful.

  11. Jenny and Lucy,

    I just noticed that the next PopD coincides with the Superbowl. I am totally NOT a sports guy, so that’s no obstacle to me; I just wondered if that might impact anybody else’s availability/interest that night.

  12. We hadn’t noticed that (not being Superbowl fiends), but we’re kind of stuck with Sunday nights. The problem is that we have people in so many different time zones including Europe that it’s always going to be a bad time for somebody, so we picked Sundays at 7 and that’s where we are.
    Also, the word is that the next movie stinks on ice anyway. I’ve never see it, but my hopes are not high. You may be better off with the Super Bowl.

  14. So very sorry to get OT here but… my feed reader tells me there’s a post 35.5 for RED and I raced over here to get the podcast… but alas, the only thing I find is “error 404 – not found”. ???

    You’re killing me.

  17. @Jenny – I turned the movie back in to Netflix but she said they went through the script back and forth between the therapist and Will Smith and Will concurred with this. Maybe if someone else owns the movie they can look in the Special Features and find this.

    I’m hoping she meant just the words, and that might be about 75% right – maybe. That scene in particular was horrible from top to bottom and I don’t think anyone can be proud of it, especially a trained professional.

    re: Super Bowl – it starts at 6p ET and PopD is at 7pET so we can watch the first quarter and decide if the commercials are any good and eat all those football foods then put on the movie:)

  18. I love The Holiday, particularly the romance btwn Kate Winslet and Jack Black. The story between Cameron Diaz and Jude Law is not quite so enchanting but it’s interesting watching two people who have erected such huge romantic barriers trying to connect with each other.

    So I’m curious as to what brings on the hate.

  20. I like the Kate Winslet scenes in The Holiday the best. Eli Wallach is awesome. I promise, even if you hate the movie, you have to like him.

  21. Thank you, Alastair!

    I lobbied to get RED onto the February syllabus so I am DYING to know how they liked it. 😉

    (slinks into the background) And now back to your regularly scheduled program…

  22. That’s it, Keith. It’s amazing. It’s about retired black ops from the CIA: Retired Extremely Dangerous. Funny as hell and two great romances. Also a lot of death, but it didn’t bother Lucy so it wasn’t bad. Lucy is a wuss about gore.