FFWD Weekly
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| Film by FFWD Staff 20 Dates During the first 10 or 15 minutes of 20 Dates I became incensed. How dare the studios and this asshole Myles Berkowitz shove this convoluted crap down my throat. This is a movie? This is entertainment? I couldn’t help but feel cheated. Had I not been forced to sit there and watch for the sake of this review, I probably would have walked out. The premise is that Myles Berkowitz is a typical Hollywood twentysomething who wants to fall in love and he also wants to make a movie. So he has this brainstorm: he'll go on 20 different dates with 20 different girls, and take his video cameraman and sound man along, too. He, like every person, thinks that on one of these dates he is bound to fall in love, so he'll also be making a real-life documentary about love and its genesis. Through his agent, Richard, Berkowitz finds a sleazy backer who gives him $60,000 to make his movie. The backer of course wants lots of tits and ass but Berkowitz wants to make a movie about real people. Of course, every girl he dates turns out to be somewhere between a supermodel (like bombshell actress Tia Carrere) and the 1996 Playmate of the Year. Real people? Yeah, right. After a half hour I slowly let myself go and actually even enjoyed parts of this home video in the guise of a movie, but still, my anger wouldn’t entirely subside. Those lying, sleazebucket Hollywood promotions people are telling us 20 Dates is a documentary film about the dating scene in L.A. I have two questions for them: (1) What makes Hollywood so special? (2) What makes Myles Berkowitz so special? And for Berkowitz, I have a comment: If you really think the public is going to believe this contrived bullshit is real life, you are worse than the sorry ass low-life you inadvertently portray yourself as in this film. Now, that all said, 20 Dates can still be entertaining. I think sensible people will hate it, but people who live somewhere out there in the world of "television is God" may actually identify with the nonsense they see here and believe it is the truth. Which of those types of people are you? |
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