Man About Town (2006)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: D Feature: D
Between
the mixed blockbuster success of Daredevil
and the exploitation of his personal life throughout the tabloid media, Ben
Affleck has seen his life in a tailspin.
After settling the personal matters, he has not been able to recover
professionally, with duds like Gigli,
Paycheck, Jersey Girl, the actually amusing Surviving Christmas, the token Clerks II, the mixed Hollywoodland and very mixed Smokin’ Aces. Mike Binder’s Man About Town is the worst of them all, just now arriving on DVD
with little fanfare.
He plays
a Hollywood agent in personal and professional turmoil who needs to find his
edge and purpose again. That in itself
is ironic, but the film (written by Binder) does not even begin to take the
idea seriously, has some of the most pathetic and unrealistic dialogue ever
about any such project and is a shocking waste of time that ever got
greenlighted to begin with. Lionsgate can
do better. So can the rest of this cast.
Rebecca
Romijn plays his wife, John Cleese is the counselor trying to help him in vain,
Adam Goldberg is a best friend and we also get the always welcome Gina Gershon,
Jerry O’Connell, an amusing Howard Hesseman in retro 60s mode and yet another
token appearance by Kal Penn as an oddball!
Yes, Kal Penn, who is quickly becoming a sign of goofy cinema worth
skipping. Give or take a few watchable
films, he needs to be pickier about scripts.
This is easily one of his worst too.
The resolution is so pat, you’ll really feel like the 100 minutes was a
waste of time. This critic sure did.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is weak, detail-degraded, color poor and
looks like it was shot on digital of some kind.
Could this be HD? Geez, but it
was shot by TV cinematographer Russ Alsobrook, A.S.C., who has done better on
TV. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is really
stretching out the poor audio, which sounds much better in its Dolby 2.0
configuration. The combination is about
as unwatchable as the content. Extras
include the ironically entitled bloopers, the also ironic deleted scenes and
two small featurettes; all of no consequence.
- Nicholas Sheffo
