Making a movie is a complex affair when many things can go wrong and nobody may care about the things that go right. Filmmakers and studios are driven mad by audiences who embrace crap and turn their nose up at something good. Even given this difficult uncertainty, there's no excuse for the litany of plainly obvious mistakes and misjudgments of Kissing a Fool. The things that are wrong with this motion picture are so glaringly wrong that it is inconceivable how no one noticed them. This sort of fiasco doesn't just get people fired, it should actually end careers.
The plot here is almost as old as fiction itself. A guy falls in love with his best friend's fiancée. The guy in this instance is Jay (Jason Lee), a passive mope who is still devastated after being dumped by his ex-girlfriend and is writing a novel about the miserable experience. His best friend is Max (David Schwimmer), a Chicago sportscaster and all around hound dog who, of course, is the exact opposite of Jay in every way. The fiancée is Sam (Mili Avitai), the editor of Jay's book. Jay introduces Sam to Max, they fall instantly into love, move in together and start talking marriage.
Let me stop with the plot and explain how this movie goes into the crapper right away and never gets out. First, it opens with Sam getting married to somebody but we can't see who. We're then introduced to Linda (Bonnie Hunt) who claims to have introduced the newlyweds and proceeds to explain how they got together to a couple of fellow wedding guests, essentially narrating the story as it appears in flashbacks. The whole point of this structure is to create a mystery as to whether Sam ends up with Max or Jay. Yet before you realize there's supposed to be a mystery, Linda says she introduced the newlyweds and then we see her introducing Jay and Sam. So, anyone with half a brain has to assume that Jay and Sam are the ones who got married and absolutely nothing, not even Max and Sam getting engaged, ever causes you to reconsider that assumption. There's never a single second when it seems like Sam might end up with anyone other than Jay, but the film still carries out the non-existent mystery until the very end.
Secondly, Jason Lee is playing the sympathetic guy in a romantic triangle and he has a unibrow. It's not an ordinary unibrow, either. It's one where his eyebrows not only meet but take sharp turns and crawl down the bridge of his nose. It's so hideous you can hardly even notice anything else when Lee is on screen. Lee isn't exactly a matinée idol to begin with and here he's made to look physically repellent.
Those two blatant errors strangle Kissing a Fool in its crib. It wouldn't have mattered how good everything else was, it was doomed from the start by those two awful and inept creative choices. And they're both such easily avoided problems. Simply have Linda say she knows the married couple instead of introduced them and there could have at least theoretically been a mystery. Pluck Lee's eyebrows every morning before shooting began and at least the audience wouldn't have been distracted by looking at Lee and expecting him to start strumming a banjo and squealing like a pig.
It ultimately doesn't matter because the rest of the movie stinks on ice. Apparently realizing they weren't talented enough to do anything with the old "two people are perfect for each other but neither wants to betray a third person" shtick, they add in a twist that sounds like something Aaron Sorkin would have resorted to if Sports Night has lasted another season or two. Max wants to test the fidelity of his fiancée, so he asks Jay to see if he can get Sam to want to sleep with him. The filmmakers also include an appearance by Jay's horrible ex-girlfriend and give Max an ex-girlfriend he's constantly hanging around with for no explicable reason. They even throw in a female cousin (Judy Greer) visiting Sam and staying at her house, as though giving each main character an annoying chick to deal with somehow made it funny.
Compounding the suck is that Max is a far more interesting and dynamic than Jay and also happens to be the one who pushes the narrative along. When the third wheel of your romantic triangle is the most proactive character in the film, that's a problem.
Bonnie Hunt and David Schwimmer are both quite good here, particularly Schwimmer, who demonstrates the comedic skills that could have led him to an entirely different career if he hadn't been cemented in the public's mind as "Ross from Friends".
Kissing a Fool is a misconceived mistake that people should have seen coming a mile away. Unless you have a thing for guys with unibrows, don't bother watching it.
The plot here is almost as old as fiction itself. A guy falls in love with his best friend's fiancée. The guy in this instance is Jay (Jason Lee), a passive mope who is still devastated after being dumped by his ex-girlfriend and is writing a novel about the miserable experience. His best friend is Max (David Schwimmer), a Chicago sportscaster and all around hound dog who, of course, is the exact opposite of Jay in every way. The fiancée is Sam (Mili Avitai), the editor of Jay's book. Jay introduces Sam to Max, they fall instantly into love, move in together and start talking marriage.
Let me stop with the plot and explain how this movie goes into the crapper right away and never gets out. First, it opens with Sam getting married to somebody but we can't see who. We're then introduced to Linda (Bonnie Hunt) who claims to have introduced the newlyweds and proceeds to explain how they got together to a couple of fellow wedding guests, essentially narrating the story as it appears in flashbacks. The whole point of this structure is to create a mystery as to whether Sam ends up with Max or Jay. Yet before you realize there's supposed to be a mystery, Linda says she introduced the newlyweds and then we see her introducing Jay and Sam. So, anyone with half a brain has to assume that Jay and Sam are the ones who got married and absolutely nothing, not even Max and Sam getting engaged, ever causes you to reconsider that assumption. There's never a single second when it seems like Sam might end up with anyone other than Jay, but the film still carries out the non-existent mystery until the very end.
Secondly, Jason Lee is playing the sympathetic guy in a romantic triangle and he has a unibrow. It's not an ordinary unibrow, either. It's one where his eyebrows not only meet but take sharp turns and crawl down the bridge of his nose. It's so hideous you can hardly even notice anything else when Lee is on screen. Lee isn't exactly a matinée idol to begin with and here he's made to look physically repellent.
Those two blatant errors strangle Kissing a Fool in its crib. It wouldn't have mattered how good everything else was, it was doomed from the start by those two awful and inept creative choices. And they're both such easily avoided problems. Simply have Linda say she knows the married couple instead of introduced them and there could have at least theoretically been a mystery. Pluck Lee's eyebrows every morning before shooting began and at least the audience wouldn't have been distracted by looking at Lee and expecting him to start strumming a banjo and squealing like a pig.
It ultimately doesn't matter because the rest of the movie stinks on ice. Apparently realizing they weren't talented enough to do anything with the old "two people are perfect for each other but neither wants to betray a third person" shtick, they add in a twist that sounds like something Aaron Sorkin would have resorted to if Sports Night has lasted another season or two. Max wants to test the fidelity of his fiancée, so he asks Jay to see if he can get Sam to want to sleep with him. The filmmakers also include an appearance by Jay's horrible ex-girlfriend and give Max an ex-girlfriend he's constantly hanging around with for no explicable reason. They even throw in a female cousin (Judy Greer) visiting Sam and staying at her house, as though giving each main character an annoying chick to deal with somehow made it funny.
Compounding the suck is that Max is a far more interesting and dynamic than Jay and also happens to be the one who pushes the narrative along. When the third wheel of your romantic triangle is the most proactive character in the film, that's a problem.
Bonnie Hunt and David Schwimmer are both quite good here, particularly Schwimmer, who demonstrates the comedic skills that could have led him to an entirely different career if he hadn't been cemented in the public's mind as "Ross from Friends".
Kissing a Fool is a misconceived mistake that people should have seen coming a mile away. Unless you have a thing for guys with unibrows, don't bother watching it.