MR. WRONG (1996)
A Film Review Copyright Dragan Antulov 2003
For some time Ellen De Generes was America's best known female television comedian. The author of this review thought that her widely-publicised sexual orientation had more to do with that than her talent. At least this was impression given by her feature film debut in MR. WRONG, 1996 comedy directed by Nick Castle.
Ellen De Generes here plays Martha Alston, 30-something woman who is increasingly frustrated by being single and whose greatest ambition is to finally find "Mr. Right", marry and have children. She seems to find that ideal in Whitman Crawford (played by Bill Pullman), man who is well-mannered, well-spoken, artistic and rich. Two of them fall madly in love with each other, but after a while Whitman soon begins to show behaviour which is more fitting to raving psychopath than to man in love. Martha tries to do sensible thing and end the relationship, but Whitman is not the man who can say "no". To make matters worse for Martha, she is also being stalked by Inga Gunther (played by Joan Cusack), Whitman's pathologically jealous ex-girlfriend.
The idea behind MR. WRONG was simple - to make parody of romantic comedies about lonely women finding men of their dreams in people seemingly unsuitable for that roles. The idea was to simply twist the scenario and make Mr. Right into Mr. Wrong. Problem for filmmakers was in their scenario resulting in film that depicts stalking - very serious real-life issue that could hardly serve as basis for comedy. On the other hand, CABLE GUY proved that it could be done. But makers of MR. WRONG obviously lacked the most important ingredient for this or any comedy - sense of humour. After some fifteen minutes or so, it becomes apparent that most jokes fall flat and the actors seem to be aware of that as much as audience; apart from Pullman, they all display enthusiasm of people being brought at gunpoint in front of camera. Ellen De Generes' comedic talent is here nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, nobody would force audience to sit through MR. WRONG, film with fitting title.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
Review written on November 5th 2003
Dragan Antulov a.k.a. Drax http://film.purger.com - Filmske recenzije na hrvatskom/Movie Reviews in Croatian http://www.ofcs.org - Online Films Critics Society
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