Sweet fa! (Sweet November (DVD))

Member Name: macutmore

Product:	Sweet November (DVD)
Date:	21/07/01 (100 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Thought provoking

Disadvantages: Dreary, unappetising, bland

It's been a while since I've sat in a Cinema theatre and witnessed people visit expecting to see perhaps a whole movie, but then 'giving it up as a bad job', only to exit and perhaps do more entertaining things! - The couple in the back row. Oh and the young girls several rows in front!

That said this movie is labelled as a romantic drama, and seemed to attract more of your afternoon drama style female audience. The cocktail of the plot or 'write up' seemed like a worthwhile piece of entertainment and I was wholly expecting a fairly romantic tear jerker set about a relationship that had some kind of secretive undertone attached to it.

What you have here is your corporate executive 'live to work' type guy (don't tell me you've been there too), that comes face to face with your carefree (and careless) almost hippy style girl. Initially unappetising (and certainly not trendy) this girl sets out to make the poor guy a victim of whatever charms she can muster up for the next thirty days, so long as the poor guy agrees, she is his!

If you look deep beyond the surface of this film, it's elements mean well. One message it puts across (almost by accident it would seem) is that there is more to life than living to work, and more to people than what they do. It's a shame this message isn't portrayed with better taste today and perhaps with a more typical, more appetising (and more British) flavour, altogether than what it is attempted to be by the screenplay here.

The movies concept is good, but it's dull, dreary and far too visually unappealing to find stimulating in any way, shape or form (It's just as well Keanu Reeves is probably cast for the ladies really). Similar in theory to the film 'Autumn in New York' (see my opinion on that one too). I can think of better ways to portray and provoke important food for thought emotion (and tears) in any romantic style drama.


I believe the best elements of a tearjerker are that any kind of relationships portrayed should be done so to enable a perception of a typical sense (even if unusual) and that any thought provoking content should promote very powerfully the onset of emotion and tears perhaps strongly enhanced by a gripping musical presence or theme, that is not too obvious. Sadly most of these are elements that lack quite seriously here (as I feel they do in many dramas). The end result is perhaps not having so much of a truly deserved cry!

The only scene I really particularly enjoyed in the movie was the one set in the restaurant when Nelson (in the film) expressed his true feelings toward the corporate 'god style' executive after he had insulted the waitress. (You'll know what I mean by this if you do see it).

If you manage to stay present during the first half hour of this film, (I'm sure if it was on TV you would really change channel), you will then have to keep watching if only by curiosity to find out the reason why the girl takes a new lover each month- you'll either kick yourself or cry, - one of the two.

Summary: