Review of My Super Ex-Girlfriend (2006) by Nathan W — 19 Jul 2009

It was fine, it was funny. Usually after watching a movie I go check out what is said about it on imdb. The signal to noise ratio is awful over there for dense analysis of films, but the random and bizarre viewpoints are often really entertaining.

This movie, among many other comedies, seems to fall into two extreme camps of hate. On the one side you get reviewers from the Midwest or South US who get completely unbent by the sexuality. Stories for these people are supposed to be morality plays which clearly end with the protagonist learning the value of some aspect of purity.

On the other end of the spectrum you have posters from Europe who seethingly deconstruct these types of films because they are low brow humor, without subtle character development, and provide pat resolutions that don't point to the sublime of human existence.

All I can say is that Annick and I laughed, quite a bit, from this movie. Most people out there probably can relate to an old relationship with someone who ultimately was just too intense and, well "nuts" to do anything but run away from. The main joke was that Thurman's character isn't misunderstood, she is in fact crazy. She's the ex-girlfriend from hell who hounds him after the breakup trying to destroy his life.

There are plenty of weird and awkward moments, and I'm just talking about dialogue, not the special effects driven scenes, which were hilarious as Wilson's slightly dopey everyman tries to talk himself out of literal or metaphorical castrations.

It was good to see Anna Faris have slightly more weight than in some of her other movies where she looks skeletal like. She's unfortunately been typecast into comedies, which she's excellent at, but you can she has a lot more to offer. Wilson and her have a chemistry that is at the heart of the story, and without which I suspect this movie would fall apart.

Wanda Sykes was great in her limited scenes. It's just unfortunate that she always gets bit parts and not something with more development.

The weak part of the movie is the under utilized Eddie Izzard. Being the "super villain" of the story he didn't get any real juicy dialogue or scenes, which is odd as the villains tend to be the most interesting characters in a super hero movie. Still, it's also a light romantic comedy so it seems they weighed in on the light aspect and didn't want to bog the story down in a darker villain. Still, something was missing unfortunately.

So if you're in the mood for something that isn't taking itself seriously, then this sexual-romantic-comedy-plus-superhero-satire could be worth a bit of your time, as long as you don't expect this particular movie to be the height of any of those categories.