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Category:    Home > Reviews > Comedy > Drama > Man About Town (2006)

Man About Town (2006)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Feature: D

 

 

Between the mixed blockbuster success of Daredevil and the exploitation of his personal life throughout the tabloid media, Ben Affleck has seen his life in a tailspin.  After settling the personal matters, he has not been able to recover professionally, with duds like Gigli, Paycheck, Jersey Girl, the actually amusing Surviving Christmas, the token Clerks II, the mixed Hollywoodland and very mixed Smokin’ Aces.  Mike Binder’s Man About Town is the worst of them all, just now arriving on DVD with little fanfare.

 

He plays a Hollywood agent in personal and professional turmoil who needs to find his edge and purpose again.  That in itself is ironic, but the film (written by Binder) does not even begin to take the idea seriously, has some of the most pathetic and unrealistic dialogue ever about any such project and is a shocking waste of time that ever got greenlighted to begin with.  Lionsgate can do better.  So can the rest of this cast.

 

Rebecca Romijn plays his wife, John Cleese is the counselor trying to help him in vain, Adam Goldberg is a best friend and we also get the always welcome Gina Gershon, Jerry O’Connell, an amusing Howard Hesseman in retro 60s mode and yet another token appearance by Kal Penn as an oddball!  Yes, Kal Penn, who is quickly becoming a sign of goofy cinema worth skipping.  Give or take a few watchable films, he needs to be pickier about scripts.  This is easily one of his worst too.  The resolution is so pat, you’ll really feel like the 100 minutes was a waste of time.  This critic sure did.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is weak, detail-degraded, color poor and looks like it was shot on digital of some kind.  Could this be HD?  Geez, but it was shot by TV cinematographer Russ Alsobrook, A.S.C., who has done better on TV.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is really stretching out the poor audio, which sounds much better in its Dolby 2.0 configuration.  The combination is about as unwatchable as the content.  Extras include the ironically entitled bloopers, the also ironic deleted scenes and two small featurettes; all of no consequence.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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