Sex and Death 101

This is by far one of the worst movies I have ever watched. I implore you to spare yourself the agony of 100 minutes of a contrived plot. The dialogue was painfully childish, the characters were insufferable, intolerable, and outright cartoon-ish. To boil the male perspective down to nothing but sex/sexual encounters hardly makes for a gripping plot. I can't think of a single redeeming quality as to why anyone would watch this piece of tripe! The funniest part about this film was when my boyfriend turned to me and said, "This must have been when Winona Ryder stole something and was desperate for work."

A black comedy that commits the cardinal sin. It isn't even mildly humorous. The plot is preposterous. Winona Ryder has come down to this??? If it's a choice of watching this "film" or getting open heart surgery, select the latter. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I happen to like Simon Baker a lot, but his considerable charm is stretched to the limit. I guess I am masochistic and I wanted to force myself to stick around until the (very) bitter end, but at the 75 minute mark I just couldn't take much more and I ripped through the balance at 2x and 4x speed. I slowed down to standard speed for the big finish which is so stupid, I wanted to take out the DVD and fry it in the microwave. If I didn't get my point across, this picture is partially rotten with scattered patches of terribleness.

I am probably not the first to say it, but the choice of Simon Baker for this romantic comedy was brilliant. Left in the hands of someone who is more familiar in rom coms would leave his movie tasting like the typical breast and fart jokes that so many popular comedies are today. Sure, he is shallow. After having sex with 29 women, he finds that he is to reach 101 before dies. Knowing who number 101 was caused him some concern, but fortunately he found out when he had 20 to go before her. No sex and he had 20 human shield to keep number 101 away. How is that working out? There are some really funny moments (Patton Oswalt is a riot!), some tender moments, some interesting moments (Bambi and Thumper, Granny C), and 100 moments of romantic comedy. Winona Ryder was amazing. You have to see this one.

Continuing with the thought that sometimes movies may honor its title, and that may save them from being bad or make them even more terrible than they are, I present to you the latter of the examples. Like "Boys", where Winona Ryder also plays a part, "Sex and Death 101" makes true justice to its title. The thing is that with a title like "Boys" there are interesting things to be said, but "Sex and Death 101"…That's all there is: sex and death. If I want those things, I can easily find them in a lame erotic film. For those who think that sex can be justified in a film and so on, I tell you that I agree; but there's nothing justifiable about the use of sex or even death in this film. "Sex and Death 101" tells the story of Roderick Blank (Simon Baker), an entrepreneur who's about getting married and receives an email with a list of every women he's had sex with and will have sex with. Any guesses? Right! They're 101 women. From that moment on, and I'm sorry if I spoil the ride for you (but all of this and more is in the unappealing trailer, if you've watched it), Roderick leaves his soon to be wife in a ridiculous scene and starts doing what probably any man would do; except that he does it in every scene and the only scenes that are not about it are about their friends (a fat, lesbian secretary and a bunch of married guys) trying to stop him with whatever excuse they find. At one point, writer/director Daniel Waters (I hope he has nothing to do with Mark) runs out of these excuses and the need for a closure takes his film to the utter bottom. But that's not everything Waters' made of as a writer. There's a woman called Miranda (the charming Leslie Bibb) who's apparently on the list but touches Roderick's heart; which leads Waters to create a joke that consists on everyone asking: "Have you f***ed her yet?". Another thing that's supposed to be funny is when his secretary makes Roderick check if her name is on the list. Oh, and there's "The Machine"! How could I forget such original invention and the origin of Roderick's problems? It's an empty space with a strong white background, and it has a crack in the wall. From that crack, it spits cards that apparently know anything anyone would like to know. The guy who controls the Machine, a possible Morpheus without glasses, says it may be an oracle but he's not sure. If you thought I had forgotten that the Great Winona Ryder plays a part, I hadn't. How could I when she's second-billed and she's not even a supporting character but a mere excuse to finalize the movie? She appears in only one scene, and gives (as convincingly as she can; it's not her fault that the script is so poor) a speech that pretends to justify the time we've wasted and fails. And Simon Baker can do better. Better than a simple smile and a cocky narration. A narration that pretends to know everything about sidestepping clichés but in the end narrates us the most convenient ending. I hate that.