For Love or Money

by Shari L. Rosenblum

The great Sigmund Freud was famously unable to figure out what women want. But the literal heroes of two films released in time for this year's day of lovers purport not only to have the answer, but to sell it at a profit. Alex Hitchens's clients are schlemiels who pay to learn the tricks they need to help them close the deal ( Hitch ), while Nick Mercer's are closed-up women who finally deal by picking up a trick ( The Wedding Date ). Each lothario's film sees men as bumbling fools, earnest in love and moreso in lust, condemnably adorable, and simply blind to women's obviousness. Each offers hope to men in its romantic formula, raised up by the charm and good humor of its lead, but neither has a particularly positive view of women. And both agree on a single premise: what women want, what they really really want, is to be played. With fine musical precision. Who knew?

Will Smith has been getting raves about his performance as Hitch –a date doctor (get it? Hitch?) – in movie-fantasy Manhattan , where apartments are spacious and bright and nerdy zhlubs live in the heart of the city: case in point, the hilarious Kevin James as love-sick accountant Albert. Hitch has got the art of love down to a science, with Fresh Prince panache. He knows the right time to look in a woman's eyes, when to turn away, how to pique her curiosity and get her in bed by the third date by moving in only 90% of the way to the first kiss – and he shares it for a fee, on recommendation only and the price of anonymity. (The movie's only realism is that none of the clownish cads he treats is interested in a woman that's his aesthetic equal, but it lends to the film's believability that Hitch carries on business in a town where the women are so desperate they'll swoon for any straight man who walks upright and doesn't dribble when he talks). Romanti-phobic from a college trauma, he takes it all now from above – a player at cool distance from the ever-threatening flames. Hitch , written by Kevin Bisch and directed by Andy Tennant (Ever After, Fools Rush In, Sweet Home Alabama ) catches him at the moment when he meets his match . . .

Eva Mendes plays Sara Melas, a sexy but cynical workaholic gossip columnist with a curvy body and an edgy personality. Her friend is the film's idea of a typical Manhattan singleton: desperate and whiny dupe to the man she met “buying lingerie for his mother” (she believes him), but Sara is a serious Penthouse pinup in tight suits and dark plastic-framed glasses. She's had her fill of men (hence the porn star comportment); she's too smart for the lines. Usually. But enter Hitch, with his dash of disdain, and she's intrigued. Just a smattering of improbable approaches, and Hitch, with his Grey Goose smoothness, melts through her icy veneer. Once in, he is reciprocally undone, turning from cool to klutzy whenever she's around. For all its rom-com regularity, their pairing is more interesting for its politicism (unremarked interracialism) than for its fire, and it manages to thunk through the film's most would-be whimsical moments (for a sexier Smith, see last year's I, Robot , with a more graceful partner in the robot who dreamed).. The utter lack of chemistry between the leads is magnified by the film's reliance on ill-designed slapstick cutesiness: an allergic reaction that makes Hitch look like Shrek on a bad day literally uglifies the movie in ways from which it doesn't recover, but he's still more appealing than Sara's faux New York sophisticate.)

The more successful love story in Hitch is the one on the sidelines, between dork Albert and his airy heiress love object, played by Amber Valletta. The film is not generous in its portraits, but the actors rise above the insults of their roles, and their combination of self-assurance and self-doubt makes the unbelievable believable . It works to soften and sweeten the film's bordering on bitter follow-through. If there's a reason to hold out hope for love – and Hitch promises us there is – it's there, where imperfection is liberation, and each lover really does complete the other. It just hasn't found all of us yet.

There's reason to hold out hope in The Wedding Date , too, as long as one keeps oneself in check. Compared by critics to Pretty Woman , to which it bears absolutely no resemblance save the hooker hook, this film, written by a woman, Dana Fox (based on the novel by Elizabeth Young), and directed by a woman, Claire Kilner ( How to Deal) , has as its premise not giddy girlishness but a woman's seasoned resignation. Its romanticism is not in finding the perfect man, but in finding yourself willing to let him in

Kat Ellis (Debra Messing) is to be the maid of honor at her sister's wedding, where the best man will be the fiancé who left her two years before. Still unhinged by the unhinging, she does not want to face her family and her ex alone and vulnerable (and why would she, with a sister so inconsiderate?). So she marks out ads for escorts, takes her cue from an article in The New York Times Magazine, and rents herself the perfect date: good-looking, chiseled, suave, supportive, and bright. In other words, Dermot Mulroney. Or Nick Mercer, as he's called in the film. Sex costs extra, Nick tells her. But the film almost winks at us: doesn't it always?

Kat doesn't look like the kind of woman who would need to pay to play, but she's the new world prototype of the single woman (not unlike Hitch's Sara): independent not because she wants to be, but because she's not strong enough to be with someone else. By the time the film gets to the wedding party, a multi-day affair, Nick proves that he's worth every penny. And not just when he drops his towel. He navigates her around the nosy relatives and loud-mouthed friends. He comforts her with warm whispers and makes her look loved. And that makes her feel like a natural woman (Quick, someone get that woman a Virgina Slim).

For all the film's unevenness, there's something oddly persuasive in the quick rundown of the oddball family, quirky friends, and unexpected twists that make up the plotline of The Wedding Date . They're almost like real life made rom-com humor – not funny enough, but with a lingering sadness. There's almost too much zing to their zaniness. And everyone can tell when a secret's been revealed by the look on someone else's face.

It's not all kookiness and montage. In fact, it's both retrogressive and subversive at the same time: it objectifies men so that women can give themselves over to them and make them Subject in the old world ways. Messing's Kat is a pretty but flat sort of character, visibly aching to fit in, to be loved. Her career is unimportant – that she has a 401K and $6,000 to spend on a fling, a meaningless tidbit. What matters is that she's closed herself up. Mulroney's Nick literally sells himself, but its his self he sells – not his body. The film is clear on this. He's not so much a hooker as a man among men with nothing to apologize for. Suave and debonair, respectful and mature. He manages to do naturally what Hitch teaches his protégées to fake: he makes a woman feel attended to. Listened to. (Reality doesn't matter; Hitch and Nick both subscribe to the idea of illusion: what you can make a woman believe. But Hitch sells it as a line, while Nick puts his whole self into it. That's commitment.).

The Wedding Date is often badly written (“I think I'd miss you if we'd never met”) and sometimes worse than that, and its gender politics are troubling (how come no matter who pays, it's the man who gets to do the choosing?). But somehow, the relationship between Kat and Nick transcends that, and seems more plausible, more adult, than that of Hitch and Sara and their make-believe okay world. Is it chemistry? Perhaps. But it's also something more. Kat and Nick come together with an understanding of looking beyond – moving toward trust rather than never questioning it. It turns out that The Wedding Date is less about romantic fulfillment than the definition of the romantic ideal. For all its missteps, it has intelligence in spite of itself. With insights unexpected, it shows a better grasp of the answer that eluded Freud than Hitch – or the critics who cheer his film -- could ever muster.

©2005 Shari L. Rosenblum
CineScene