Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com "We Put the SIN in Cinema"
© Copyright 2002 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved.
The latest feature film to be shot locally by homegrown talent is Checkout, a romantic comedy about a grocery store dating service that is set to open a one-week run this Friday at the Little Theatre. Directed and co-written (with foreclosure attorney Mark Costello) by Greece native Mark Foggetti, Checkout is loaded with recognizable settings and a handful of familiar faces (like ubiquitous radio DJ Scott Spezzano and Sonya Raimi, the recently deceased television mother of Vinnie and Angelo), but there isn't much in this predictable picture to hold the attention of any non-Rochesterian.
After opening with a strange set piece depicting two young boys spying on their underwear-model neighbor as she undresses, Checkout flashes forward ten years to present-day Webster, where the hopelessly single Nick McCain (Michael Parducci) lives with a house full of animals (the sign of a true hopelessly single individual) and toils away at Hegedorn's, a grocery store struggling to keep its head above water. He's been passed over for promotion to assistant manager, yet Nick still seems to be the only employee who cares at all about his job.
Meanwhile, Nick's high school squeeze, Noreen (Carrie Kaye), is living in Los Angeles and finds herself busy climbing the corporate marketing ladder, dining on that foo-foo West Coast cuisine and accepting a marriage proposal from the unbelievably unctuous Chad (Jack Gwaltney), a man she doesn't love but who can offer a very secure future. Did we mention Noreen's last name is Hegedorn? That's right - she's the daughter of the perpetually befuddled grocery store owner who has struck a contract with a Wal-Mart-type business tycoon, unaware that the mogul plans to turn Hegedorn's into a giant parking lot unless the store increases its sales by $40,000 a week.
When Noreen receives a desperate phone call from her pop, she hightails it back to Webster, where she hopes to suggest a few ways in which the store can boost its business. Hmmmm...I wonder if she'll rekindle her romance with Nick? I wonder if they'll be able to save the store from demolition? I wonder if the smarmy Chad will finally get his comeuppance? If you can't predict the answers to any of these questions, you probably have never seen a movie in your life.
There is a far less formulaic subplot in Checkout that involves parlaying Nick's uncanny ability to play Cupid with Hegedorn's customers into an unusual dating service that promises to fix people up amidst the store's zucchini and buns. Nick's first customer/victim is his uncle Louie (Checkout's only recognizable star - Burt Young), but before long the service is booming, resulting in the entrepreneur having to ask his pussyhound brother (Anson Scoville) for help. Also, there are two scenes involving bird shit.
Like I said before, it's easy for the familiar faces and surroundings to distract you from the conventional, humdrum story (scenes are set at Nick Tahou's and Woody's, while places like Seabreeze are name-dropped in Checkout's dialogue). But there are some things that are just too glaring to overlook, such as the whole $40,000-a-week increase in sales, which we later learn would be a whopping fifty percent jump. How in the world could a store that sells only $27,000 worth of goods each week afford to pay a full-time staff that includes a floral specialist, a free-sample distributor and whatever it is that Nick's brother does (we're told he works there but never actually see him do anything)?
========== X-RAMR-ID: 32973 X-Language: en X-RT-ReviewID: 788451 X-RT-TitleID: 10001996 X-RT-SourceID: 595 X-RT-AuthorID: 1146 X-RT-RatingText: 3/10
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews