Screenplays - Review: Down To You

By Ruth E. Fabiano

With every new success and every new fad, there are those who take it to the edge until it becomes meaningless. A cliché of sorts, which through time becomes meaningless, and then later on, is re-invented into something with bite.

I fear this has happened with the "youth explosion" in Hollywood today. We can thank "SCREAM" for the beginning of the horror re-invention, and "She's All That" for the youth comedy angle. But as always it has become tiresome, the horror business given one final blow by the bomb of "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer" and the new movie "Down To You" is one that I hope breaks the cycle for comedies.

I walked into this theater with a fresh mind, hoping that Julia Stiles would somehow salvage this movie. She only made it

worse. I looked around the theater to find myself surrounded by teeny boppers, only there hoping to catch some of Freddie Prinze Jr's dimply smile and roll their eyes at Ms. Stiles. Soon I found myself watching a poorly written Harlequin novel "wannabe". The characters were one dimensional, even Al's (Prinze) friends came off as moronic players, one even being so desperate for sex that he would sleep with a 60 year old physical therapy patient he met at work.

A poor plot can sometimes be revived, with clever camera angles, witty comments, and at least realistic dialogue. Even the older gen-x couples around me winced when the nauseating sex scenes came on, and as each characters described their routines before after and during sex, it had attached a message of familiarity, which no one in the theater was remotely familiar with.

In the climatic finale scene, they have the two main characters, for the first time in their relationship being completely '"honest" with each other. They spout out phrases that have only been said in other movies, such as "I know we can take each other places that we've only imagined".

In conclusion, I hope this marks the end of BAD "teen" comedies (although I suspect this was more of the gen-x crowd angle), and at least get back to funny storylines, interesting characters and realistic dialogue.