Lord Taylor of Warwick

Rating scale:  = excellent , = good , = poor

Frankly cinema popcorn has more taste and substance than this comedy directed by Ivan Reitman, of Ghostbusters fame. It’s largely redeemed by likeable lead Luke Wilson plus (relative unknowns) Rainn Wilson and Anna Faris, who are entertaining playing work colleagues to Wilson’s character Matt. Uma Thurman (of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill) is disappointing as the titular ex-girlfriend, a New York superhero known as G-Girl. She ends up dating Matt after he chases a thief who snatches her handbag on the subway. Of course she then deals out her own version of justice to the robber.

Around 40 minutes into the film, G-Girl reveals her identity to Matt who now understands why she keeps running off to the ladies bathroom during their dates. But rather than coming across as goofy and charming, G-Girl is needy and irritating and Matt quickly ends their brief relationship. The film is rather like G-Girl in that you also want to dump it about an hour into the running time. This is mainly due to the crude, pointless sex scenes (what’s really so humorous about a man having his head bashed into the headboard of his bed by the exertions of his super heroine girlfriend?) and the predictability of the plot. We all know that G-Girl is going to use her super powers to get her revenge on Matt. For example, she uses her super strength to pull a shark out of the sea and dump it in his new girlfriend’s apartment. She also causes him to lose his job after whizzing through his office and stripping him of all his clothes during an important presentation to clients. It doesn’t come across as funny, but pathetic and trivialises emotions felt after the break up of real life relationships. Because of this, you end up not really caring enough about G-Girl to want to sit through this 95 minute film and find out what happens to her, which is surely the point anyway? Sadly, the later entry of UK comedian Eddie Izzard also fails to give the film the necessary humour injection. He is a let down as wimpy super villain Professor Bedlam, who harbours a secret crush on G-Girl from their high school days, when she first gained her super powers.

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