Review of Next Stop Wonderland (1998) by Betsy B — 08 Jan 2012

Hope Davis plays Erin Castleton, a 29-year-old nurse living in Boston. Her activist boyfriend Sean (Philip Seymour-Hoffman) dumps her and puts the reasons on a VCR tape, but at least he delivers it in person. She's hurt and upset, but not devastated-we sense he was not Mr. Right, but just somebody to be a couple with. Soon after, a co-worker begs Erin to come to a soiree with her to serve as an excuse to escape her date.

Meanwhile, Erin's mother, knowing that Erin is no extrovert, has submitted a personal newspaper ad for her. This does not please Erin, but when she finds that 61 admirers have responded to the ad, she's flattered and intrigued. With trepidation Erin begins to return calls.

The soiree Erin attends with her co-worker is to celebrate the expansion of a city aquarium. Alan (Alan Gelfant), a 35-year-old marine biology student works at the aquarium. His brother/roommate has seen Erin's "soul mate" ad and, for fun, has challenged two friends to a bet. They invite Alan, but being a better man, he declines. The bet is that they all answer Erin's ad, go out with her, and the first one to score gets $200 from the other two. Now, by "score" they mean French kiss, so that scenario isn't the reason for the R rating, but it's still a childish, mean-spirited act that women do NOT think humorous. Clearly, these man-children are not familiar with the phrase "a woman scorned.".

Erin embarks on the dating adventure. The string of, shall we be kind and say, unlikely matches is hilarious to watch, including the three gamblers' fiasco. We aren't dragged through entire evenings, just the funny parts.

Although Erin wasn't madly in love with Sean, and even though she says she's never lonely, her tenacious pursuit of a romance demonstrates otherwise. We piece together her story: a harmonious upbringing by happily married parents, family vacations to peaceful and serene Ireland, a doting poet father, and his sudden death, which left a hole in her heart which could be filled only by a facsimile of her happy past.

I liked that the story had interesting elements and several interesting characters. It was entertaining and sweet. The editing was tight. The leading man wasn't gorgeous, but very appealing. His character development was in stages and very effective. My only issue with the film was that Hope Davis has only three expressions: sad, content, and asleep, and the last one is an assumption. The rating was a very mild R, perhaps because of language on one occasion. Not an Oscar winner, but if you're in the mood for a chick flick and have 105 minutes to kill, you could do worse. I give it a 6 1/2.