Main cast: Freddie Prinze Jr (Al Connelly), Julia Stiles (Imogen Connelly), Selma Blair (Cyrus), Shawn Hatosy (Eddie Hicks), Zak Orth (Monk Jablonski), Ashton Kutcher (Jim Morrison), Rosario Dawson (Lana), and Henry Winkler (Ray Connelly)
Director: Kris Isacsson
Poor Julia Stiles. She can act, she has great on-screen charisma. Now to ditch her bland one-expression male co-stars.
Down to You tries to be an indie romantic comedy, only to end up even shallower than the much-derided mainstream chick-flicks, no thanks to the inability of Freddie Prinze Jr to emote and a lot of too-obvious worship of the script on the beautiful main characters.
Imogen and Al are college students who fell in love and married after graduation. This they tell me, for the style is such that the main characters tell the story to the audience right towards the camera. But Al starts feeling insecure when Imogen starts doing everything better than he, and worse, she starts making demands that make his macho manly self feels castrated. His male friends sneer – “Shall I call you Alice?” – so Al decides to put his foot down. Relationship on the rocks ahead!
This story could have worked if the plot is tighter, and if Mr Prize would just STOP SMIRKING AS IF HE’S IN SOME PRIVATE JOKE! But relationship development is scanty. Heck, I have no idea why Imogen, a stereotypical arty type who speaks mawkish arty sentiments that any arty-type would denounce, would want to date, much less sleep with, an insecure braindead man like Al. And Imogen and Al have friends right out of a bad Seinfeld parody show – cartoony, not-at-all-funny, and function only to say stupid things that our not-too-bright Al follows blindly.
True, there are some charming moments, and Mr Prize can be charming at times, but there is too much fluff. Sometimes, supposedly-indie directors should take note: romantic comedies only work if one add in a healthy dose of a unhip substance called human emotions. That’s one serious ingredient missing in Down to You, making it a failure as a romance.
