Rent The Opposite of Sex on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: Don Roos
Directed by: Don Roos
Starring: Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Galecki
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
A 16-year-old girl visits her gay half-brother and ends up seducing his boyfriend, thus wreaking havoc on all of their lives.
Verdict
It has a unique tone due to a protagonist that just wants to cause chaos for everyone. She's a sociopath, and while it may be due to the ignorance of youth, it's also criminal. She's the narrator and flippant about most of the events, though that does provide an excellent narration that knows narration is usually bad. Some of the jokes might have been subversive at the time, but they haven't aged. Unfortunately the parts are better than the whole.
Skip it.
Review
What's outstanding about this movie is the excellent narration by Dedee (Christina Ricci), who knows and upends all the tropes, making fun of and pointing them out.
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| Christina Ricci plays Dedee |
This is a salacious story of a complicated family, and Dedee seems like a sociopath. Her goal is to create havoc, and I was never sure why other than for the sake of the plot. You could argue she creates this elaborate ruse because she's a teenager incompetently covering for a problem, but if that's the case she takes it farther than is practical or believable. As a hateful character, she can be quite funny with how mean she is to everyone. She has no regard for anyone, and if she was mean to unlikable people that's one thing. Here, she's ruining people because she can.
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| Lisa Kudrow, Martin Donovan play Lucia, Bill |
Dedee attempts to seduce her step-brother's boyfriend Matt (Ivan Sergei) and succeeds. She's aided by the fact that Matt isn't very bright, but even that stretches credibility. She seems to just like antagonizing people, but her goal is to cover for the fact her boyfriend got her pregnant. I'm not sure how this is better. She's like a bomb that has exploded in everyone's life, leaving a path of destruction. Everything she says is a lie.
Dedee is a villain masquerading as a main character. I don't know if it's intentionally subversive, glib, or just dated. This movie has gay characters seemingly just to provide cover for being reductive and provocative.
This is one of the few films that knows how to use narration well. It's extremely dark humor with an acerbic wit. I like the premise, people should want the opposite of sex as sex only causes problems. All of these characters, thanks to Deedee, end up in a better place but Deedee exists just to create a problem just so we have a plot. Individual parts of this work, but I didn't like it as a whole.
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