| Product: |
Someone Else (DVD) |
| Date: |
09.03.08 (96 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Great acting and direction
Disadvantages: All a bit so so and unsympathetic main character
Steven Mangan is a funny man, most of the time. He is somehow able to make the extreme situations in Green Wing, for what he is best known, and the Barclaycard ads seem like everyday occurrences. Someone Else is his vehicle, he is in pretty much every scene and the other characters are all peripheral to his story and only there so that we can follow what happens to him.
Someone Else is the tale of what could be called a typical man, never satisfied with what he has and always thinking that the grass is probably greener on the other side.
David (Mangan) has a beautiful girlfriend, Lisa, who loves him to bits and will do anything for him but he is not happy with that at all and is having an affair with a young woman who is much more exciting than his long term love. Given a choice by the other woman in his life he chooses her over Lisa only to find out that after telling Lisa about Nina, the other woman, that Nina has found another married man and isn't interested in him anymore. What does David do now? He has burned his bridges and is now left with no one...... can he find Someone Else?
Someone Else is a typical modern British comedy, it is amusing rather than laugh out loud funny. Like a Hugh Grant comedy it is an ensemble piece where the ensemble are bit part characters who revolve around the main characters actions. In fact you could imagine that ten years ago this would have starred a younger Hugh Grant and would have had that little extra bit of class that would have made this a smash hit, star wise, acting wise and script wise. As it is Mangan is not a big enough star to pull in the punters and the film is too small to pump out the big promotion push, to get the film noticed on billboards, on TV and the like.
I doubt that this will change for the DVD release either, without any kind of promotion then the success of Someone Else is going to depend on reviews and word of mouth, and I don't think either of them are going to do enough to get loads of people spend their time and money watching it.
It is not that there is anything actually wrong with Someone Else. It is nice, pleasant and brings a few chuckles out of you while watching it. That is about it though, it never quite manages to get past that for me. It ambles along happily following David as he mopes about and tries to sort out his life but does it without really ... well interesting you much at all.
Part of this is because David is in a pickle of his own making so to speak. He wasn't dropped into the situation of looking for a new woman in his life in a way that would help to elicit viewer sympathy with his predicament. He got himself into it and everything that comes his way really is all of his own doing.
While this means that Someone Else is a rom com with a much harder bite/edge than expected it also means that the main character, the one you tend to associate with, is not very likeable at all. By leaving the almost perfect girlfriend, just because he thinks that he can do much better, makes him a bit of an idiot, to put it mildly. As always if I don't like the main character in a film it does affect my overall opinion of it and this is a case in point. I really don't like David at all, he is so self centred it is hard to find anything you could like about him, so from my point of view I really didn't care for his excuses and his moaning about his situation.
This is a shame as the harder edge to Someone Else is a bit of a departure from the normal expectations this genre of film engenders into you. Sadly though even the great performance of Mangan isn't enough to make it a must see movie. If you do really like Rom Coms it might be worth a little look see but don't put it high on your list!
Summary: After losing his girlfriend and his mistress can David find Someone Else?
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