Sweet November
Do you ever hear the premise of a movie and feel really compelled by it to the point that you get a ‘that was a good movie’ feeling without even having seen it? This is how I felt about the very vague idea I had about Sweet November. I remembered it was supposed to be about Charlize Theron as one of those quirky-and-beautiful-but-damaged-free-spirit-type girls (I’m thinking Kirsten Dunst in Crazy/Beautiful or The Virigin Suicides or Drew Barrymore in Mad Love or, to a lesser extent Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) who dates and loves a different man each month because she’s dying and for November that man is Keanu Reeves.
So, I didn’t see this movie when it came out but I always felt compelled by the story. It seemed so romantic and promising. I sort of wish I had just kept holding it up in my mind that way, because the movie actually completely sucked.
Keanu is an advertising executive (I’m going to start a list of movies where guys are ad executives for no good reason, I swear, there are more white collar jobs in the world, aren’t there?). Anyway, so he spends too much time working and not enough time with his girlfriend (Lauren Graham who spends the majority of her screentime in her underwear – which I would do, too, if my body looked like hers) and is a total dick (of course!). But his world collapses around him when he has a breakdown because the hot dog campaign he was pitching gets shot down because it is frighteningly pornographic. So he gets fired and Lauren Graham dumps him and he’s like so lonely until Charlize Theron (with whom he had a chance encounter earlier) shows up at his door and after some coaxing and false starts, he agrees to move in with her for November so she can like, remind him what is so great about life and stuff. Let me reiterate, I really wanted to like this movie.
So he moves in with her. They fool around a bit. It is completely unsexy. They go to the beach and she makes him wear nerdy clothes (I’m not totally sure how this helps her mission…) and hang out with this little kid who has no dad and – uh-oh – whoops – you won’t believe what happens – warming – spoiler ahead – THEY FALL IN LOVE.
Except for she’s dying. Lymphoma, I think (the bad kind!). And she hasn’t told him, but she gets really sick and he finds out and then, after Keanu has a meeting with a really fancy advertising guy and turns down the job because the guy is a jerk so that we can know that he has TRULY changed, she dies. Or, she just kind of disappears because she doesn’t want him to see her die.
I never once believe Keanu and Charlize together. It’s weird, because I liked them together in The Devil’s Advocate (which I’ve seen about a million times and I loooove how she goes crazy in that movie). But in this romantic context, it just seemed like C. Ther. was trying so hard to be in love with him and he was just like, bored. Or struggling to remember his lines or something. Needless to say, it’s a little difficult to get swept up in a love story when you can’t believe that the people are in love. There were also too many subplots (Greg Germann being a jerk [typecast?], the kid with no dad, another ad exec who is actually BFF with C. Ther. and is also a crossdresser, rescuing dogs from experimentation) that are totally nonsensical and get no payoff.
So, boo hoo for me, this movie sucked. At least now I won’t think about it ever again.