Dinner and Driving is a movie where the criticism starts with a deceptive DVD cover and just never stops. From the narcissistic subject matter to the horrible structure to an ending where all the dialog might as well be in Esperanto for as little sense as it makes, this film is like a batting cage of cinematic horse hockey, serving up one example of bad writing, bad directing, bad acting and bad everything upon which aspiring reviewers can practice their craft.
To start with, the DVD cover shows a guy being embraced by beautiful women on either side, all dark and serious like the film is one of those moody indy flicks about sex, relationships and how people are complete bastards to each other. Then you watch the movie and realize it's a bright, broad and toothless sitcom about relationships and people being complete bastards to each other, but without any sex. The DVD cover wants you make you think Dinner and Driving is like Sex, Lies and Videotape, but it's really closer to an episode of Suddenly Susan where people say the F word a few times.
The story starts out as bad wish fulfillment for all wannabe writers and never gets any better than that. Jason (Joey Slotnick) is an unattractive, unappealing, unsuccessful author. He has a massively receding hairline, a Jewfro, hasn't written anything in a long time and teaches English as a Second Language classes for a living. Despite all that, and his adolescent fear of commitment, the beautiful, smart and sexy Laura (Paula Devicq) has been Jason's girlfriend for three years. Even though Jason is a huge loser and their relationship is only treading water, Laura puts up with it all until the script needs her to become a nagging bitch to make the pathetic Jason sympathetic.
But wait, one beautiful woman for the Gollum-like Jason isn't enough. His old college girlfriend Grace (Brigitte Bako) comes back into his life and she's all beautiful and quirky and completely adores Jason despite his utter lack of redeeming features. Grace is at Jason's beck and call and more than happy to go to bed with him without making any demands, like he should leave his girlfriend or something. I can just barely put up with those TV shows where the fat guy has a hot wife. A physically, intellectually and emotionally repellent guy like Jason having two very attractive women captivated by him is more than I can tolerate.
As you can probably guess, Jason is caught between Laura and Grace and has to grow up and figure out what and who he really wants and blah, blah, blah. Thrown into the mix are Jason's very Jewish mother and lapdog father, a married couple that are only in the story to kill time and a sweaty-faced Sam Robards as Jason's pig of a brother who, wait for it, leads Jason astray only to instantly change his ways and become an adult in order to ham handedly hammer the message of Jason's immaturity into the audience's skulls. There's also a subplot that goes nowhere about Jason being inspired to write by memories of Grace and some really inexplicable flashbacks involving the dating habits of Jason's brother. I mean these are really inexplicable flashbacks. It's like watching Star Wars and seeing a flashback about what one of the Stormtroopers had for breakfast earlier that day.
In fairness, there are a couple of marginally amusing moments in Dinner and Driving, which is very sparse for a supposed comedy but it is something.
The bottom line on this movie is that 90% of it is there to fill up pages in the script and the other 10% has all the depth of a puddle of drool. Dinner and Driving stinks.
To start with, the DVD cover shows a guy being embraced by beautiful women on either side, all dark and serious like the film is one of those moody indy flicks about sex, relationships and how people are complete bastards to each other. Then you watch the movie and realize it's a bright, broad and toothless sitcom about relationships and people being complete bastards to each other, but without any sex. The DVD cover wants you make you think Dinner and Driving is like Sex, Lies and Videotape, but it's really closer to an episode of Suddenly Susan where people say the F word a few times.
The story starts out as bad wish fulfillment for all wannabe writers and never gets any better than that. Jason (Joey Slotnick) is an unattractive, unappealing, unsuccessful author. He has a massively receding hairline, a Jewfro, hasn't written anything in a long time and teaches English as a Second Language classes for a living. Despite all that, and his adolescent fear of commitment, the beautiful, smart and sexy Laura (Paula Devicq) has been Jason's girlfriend for three years. Even though Jason is a huge loser and their relationship is only treading water, Laura puts up with it all until the script needs her to become a nagging bitch to make the pathetic Jason sympathetic.
But wait, one beautiful woman for the Gollum-like Jason isn't enough. His old college girlfriend Grace (Brigitte Bako) comes back into his life and she's all beautiful and quirky and completely adores Jason despite his utter lack of redeeming features. Grace is at Jason's beck and call and more than happy to go to bed with him without making any demands, like he should leave his girlfriend or something. I can just barely put up with those TV shows where the fat guy has a hot wife. A physically, intellectually and emotionally repellent guy like Jason having two very attractive women captivated by him is more than I can tolerate.
As you can probably guess, Jason is caught between Laura and Grace and has to grow up and figure out what and who he really wants and blah, blah, blah. Thrown into the mix are Jason's very Jewish mother and lapdog father, a married couple that are only in the story to kill time and a sweaty-faced Sam Robards as Jason's pig of a brother who, wait for it, leads Jason astray only to instantly change his ways and become an adult in order to ham handedly hammer the message of Jason's immaturity into the audience's skulls. There's also a subplot that goes nowhere about Jason being inspired to write by memories of Grace and some really inexplicable flashbacks involving the dating habits of Jason's brother. I mean these are really inexplicable flashbacks. It's like watching Star Wars and seeing a flashback about what one of the Stormtroopers had for breakfast earlier that day.
In fairness, there are a couple of marginally amusing moments in Dinner and Driving, which is very sparse for a supposed comedy but it is something.
The bottom line on this movie is that 90% of it is there to fill up pages in the script and the other 10% has all the depth of a puddle of drool. Dinner and Driving stinks.