Review of Flypaper (2011) by Renee P — 31 Jan 2012

There's good reason you've never heard of this movie, and it's not necessarily because it's something awful. Flypaper is about two groups of bank robbers that decide to rob the same bank at the same exact time, just one of those coincidences.

But they didn't count on an overly eccentric Patrick Dempsey being in the bank to save the day. This is a really weird movie; it's a bank heist comedy and romantic comedy in one, but not blended together.

They're separated like oil and water, and one never spills out into the other. It's almost surreal to see these straight characters come face to face with these over the top caricatures. The reason why you haven't heard of this is because it's a marketing nightmare.

Apart from the identity crisis of what movie it wants to be, it's also an unrated comedy, which is always harder to sell (I'm sure they would have trimmed down the swearwords to be a PG-13 if it had actually gotten picked up, but at is it, it's the equivalent to a soft R), and it also features stars that don't exactly bring in the crowds in droves, like Dempsey and Ashley Judd.

It's not a very well conceived plot, and it all falls apart the moment you start thinking about it with any depth at all. But this is written by the same guys who penned The Hangover, and where this movie does actually work is with all in the punch-up dialogue.

About 80% of he laughs I got was from side banter and throwaway lines. That is the sell point, and I did get some pretty good laughs from it. But really, I can't stress enough how bizarre this movie is; you get to see Patrick Dempsey essentially playing House, with crazy conspiracy theories to spare, and then it all ties together in a Clue style conclusion.

If you still want to see this after reading all of this, I would recommend that you proceed with caution.