Head Over Heels
Click here for IMDB's info on Head Over Heels
By Zuri Rice
I watch cheesy romance flicks as much as the next
person. I know the
formula. Girl and boy meet and fall in love, various problems drive them
apart, an hour passes, and they come together in a glorious union of true
love while the hit song from the soundtrack plays in the background. I
have seen this formula in a
hundred different movies in a thousand ways and I still fall for it. From
start of the opening credits you know where it's going and how it will
end, but there is just something fun in the ride. Some films are more
insightful in their portrayals, some more humorous, and some just stink.
Head Over Heels is amazing. It has all the right components: a big
Hollywood
heartthrob, a beautiful naive young girl, a mysterious subplot, and even
scantily clad supermodels. Yet somehow, the film fails horribly. By the
end, I didn't care if they got together or not; I just wanted it to be
over. Half way through the movie, I realized that at some point the
scriptwriter and the director forgot what kind of movie they were making
and never quite remembered. The trials of boy meets and falls for girl
became lost amidst outrageous plot extras like disgusting bodily humor,
sexually charged dogs,
and cross-dressing maintenance personnel. The result is a film that
sometimes feels like a romantic comedy, but which consists mostly of
out-of-place antics more typical of movies like There's Something About
Mary. It starts out familiarly enough. Amanda Pierce
(Monica Potter) is a New York
art restorer who has had several bad relationships with men. When she
finds
her current boyfriend cheating on her, she moves out looking for a new
beginning and a new home. After answering an ad, she starts renting a room
(more like a closet) in the lavish apartment of four Manhattan
supermodels.
While there, she has a chance encounter with Jim Winston (Freddie Prinze
Jr.) a gorgeous fashion executive who makes her literally weak in the
knees. Convinced that something is flawed in every guy that she is
attracted to, she and her roommates spend hours upon hours (I guess that
models don't have to work) watching his apartment (which happens to be
across the way). Things are going great until they witness what looks
like a murder, and from then on the film plunges into sheer irrelevant
madness. The movie does occasionally offer momentary amusement
through its
randomness and shock value. One model periodically delights us with her
incest-tinged stories about her Uncle Pete, and the film's over-the-top
portrayal of the life of supermodels who seem to never work, walk around
topless, and have men (and women) literally worshipping them is
fascinating, but the film has few redeeming qualities. In general, Head
Over Heels is an utterly aimless movie and an embarrassing attempt at the
boy-meets-girl-formula. If you want to feel gushy and
see true love at its simplest and most commercial, get some popcorn and
rent She's
All That again.