Love and Other Disasters

Love and Other Disasters (2006)

--Alek Keshishian

So this is a British romantic comedy and I'm just going to say, up front, that it was pretty good and I both enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who is feeling icky after watching the current box-office-y american romantic comedies, because this is different from them. It's been awhile since I watched this and the plot is kind of complicated so bear with me. An american, Jacks (Brittany Murphy) in working at a fashion magazine and dealing with her love-life. She's in a relationship with someone she keeps breaking up with but who she can't stop seeing for some reason. Her gay best friend (Matthew Rhys) is also have problems with loveee, but his is more that he nitpicks and finds problems with pretty much anyone he's ever interested in. Then there's another friend (Catherine Tate--yay!) who is pretty much drunk the whole time and I can't remember what she does other than show up and drink at random times. So, yeah, Jacks meets some Spanish photographer and thinks he's gay but he's not and they start falling for each other. Even though the plot is kind of complicated, it's also pretty straight-forward and there's not much innovation.

I thought it was interesting that Brittany Murphy was in this film, since it's British and I'm pretty sure she isn't, though pretty much everyone else is. Also, I think it's interesting that even though she's an American she doesn't seem like and her accent pretty much shows that she's been in London for awhile and I think it was even said that she was originally born there anyway. It kind of made me wonder if Murphy is living in England or something? Since I haven't really seen her in any American movies lately and lots of actors like London, but whatever.

I really liked Matthew Rhys in this (and everything else, "Brothers and Sisters" = yay!). It's great that I didn't know that he was english until I saw him in this film and I'm like, wow, he has a pretty believable accent and then I looked it up and now I have to amend that and say, wow, he has a really believable american accent! Cause he does. And his character was awesome in this film. He pretty much lived in a fantasy word and at times we got to see his fantasies so it was great. Especially the therapist scene with the farting. It was something about the stages of farting and one's comfortableness with farting in front of your partner and the relation to stages of love. It was pretty cool and kind of made sense, so you can see the movie just for that part if you want. Go for it.

I also like Catherine Tate. I can't really explain that, I blame Graham Norton and "Dr. Who". So, she's always cool in like everything and I think that everyone should check out her work because she's really funny!

Okay, I kinda watched this one awhile ago and that's pretty much all I remember. Murphy's character is kind of annoying sometimes and that poor actress always looks tragically anorexic nowadays, but other than that this film has some fun parts. Roll with them. Oh, crap, I forgot that Orlando Bloom's sister is also in this film and he makes a cameo, along with Gwyneth Paltrow.