Review of Meet Bill (2007) by Brendan H — 24 Jul 2008

Aaron Eckhart really impressed me with his performance Thank You For Smoking and even more so in The Dark Knight, which I think has been completely underrated, though Heath Ledger's Joker was the pretty much the highlight of the movie and the year. But since I had already seen all the Heath Ledger films I wanted see, I decided to look for another film starring my second favorite performer from TDK, Eckhart. I ended up finding one that came out back in June, Meet Bill or "Bill", none of the websites confirm what the title really is. It was a comedy, Eckhart's good at those, and it had an attractive cast of actors and actresses, besides one certain person. While I was watching this thing, I was wondering, aren't comedies supposed to be funny and make you feel good at the end?

Now when I said an attractive all-star cast, I meant strong performers giving strong performances, and then there's Jessica Alba. The thing that's going for this movie the most is the cast it doesn't deserve, the good performances that save it from being horrible, but not from bad. Besides Eckhart, Elizabeth Banks does dome good, Timothy Olymphant, the amazong team of Kristen Wiig and Jason Sudeikis outside the SNL realm. There's a few other I could mention but I don't feel like waisting my time. Eckhart does give an impressive act as Bill, the overweight Bank executive who's trying to cope with the fact that his wife's cheating on him, he's stuck with a kid that wants to hang around him all the time (not his son) and that Jessica Alba is in his life looking hot but acting incredibly terrible, but we all know we don't have Jessica Alba in movies for her acting, heck I'm not paying attention to her acting, she's there so we'll keep our eyes on the screen. Besides the fact that these characters suck, there's an definable chemistry between all of them, which is hard to get in a movie where no one likes each other and the story doesn't really try to bring on chemistry, besides the boy and Bill, but I'll talk about that later. And you know when a movie has great performances to show but they really don't save the movie, like in Freedomland or more recently, The Other Boleyn Girl, that's like Meet Bill, only this one's more of a catastrophe. But you gotta love Kirsten Wiig and Jason Sudeikis who actually shine about the rest even they have like the least scenes in the film. Whenever they come around, that when the movie shines, otherwise it's gloomier than having to watch reruns of Hannah Montana, or watching a new episode of Hannah Montana, whatever you find depressing in life. It's a shame so much talent is wasted here.

Now where the acting is top notch, the story and humor is way off. This guy's life completely sucks, shows that money doesn't buy happiness, or a faithful wife. It's not really funny to watch it, when you feel like cutting your wrists instead of laughing. A couple times I got a laugh, one big one when Bill and that kid he was hanging with were extremely high and were running around a sports department story pushing over clothing dummies and climbing the rock wall. But all the negative stuff, the cheating, the hating, the creepiness, it all showers over what could be possibly funny in which it has a lot of opportunity. Writer Melisa Wallack must've been drinking a couple shots when writing this, when you're drunk and out of it, every thing's funny. You're better off watching this when you're high or something, heck Meet the Spartans would be the comedy of the year if you were high.

The kid though that befriends Bill is one weird dude, not in a good way. I'll start off with the least creepy thing about him. Jessica Alba is his best friend in the movie and he buys her lingerie in the same lingerie store she's working in. There's even a scene where he's wearing lingerie for Alba, if you watch the DVD, which shouldn't, skip this scene, for your own safety, it's seriously disturbing. What's even more disturbing is the friendship he and Bill have. He follows Bill everywhere, his work, the stores, his house, the shower, the swimming, picks up women with him and has sleep overs in a tent. It's not Bill that's the weird one, he asks the kid to get lost quite frequently, until he believes the kid taught him something, that doesn't really make sense in the end, and they start playing with fireworks and touching girls' boobs, not Jessica Alba's or Elizabeth Bank's though. The fact that this kid wants to hang out with this crazy, emotionally damaged guy who's on the brink of loosing it is odd enough, but he's treating Bill like another high school buddy, which makes this film overly creepy in the end. Creepy doesn't spell funny or the slightest hint of a good when watching it.

I don't regret watching Meet Bill or "Bill", it had top notch acting and that awesome moment where Bill and the boy were high, that was great. But thanks to it's unbalanced story, unnatural friendship between Bill and that kid and extremely depressing look at life, it's simply no fun. But like I said, you gotta love Kirsten Wiig and Jason Sudeikis, especially Kirsten Wiig, who are the only ones having fun doing all of this. It's one of the worst of the year, not one of "THE WORST", but one of "the worst", you'll have a better time than sitting through the life killer that is The Love Guru or the hour long near death experience that is Meet the Spartans. I really wanted to like this film, I really did, Aaron Eckhart's done a lot of good lately and I wanted to see him shine again in a movie that shines even brighter than his performance, but what happens when a movie simply doesn't want you to like it? You get something like Meet Bill,a major crap fest. Like Kirsten Wiig and Jason Sudeikis say in this mistake of a movie: "Good-bye and have a Sweet/Sweet Day!" Oh brother.